Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have a question for those of you who've kept boxies outdoors for years, I'll get to it in a sec.
I only got into box turtle keeping when I kept getting hold of those with health problems. Health problems means they've spent their time indoors except when we had the pen before the new fence was built.. then they'd stay outside for the day in summer but be back in to sleep.
Weather changes happen suddenly here & that's normal. Last night it changed, a huge change. It was in the 90s here earlier in the week but today it hasn't even hit 50 yet. I've been watching Hobo the wild male, he vanished 2 days before this cold front hit, I believe that boy knows exactly what to do.
This morning I was leaving for work, opened my gate at 8:30am & there's Janie sitting in the 45 degree weather out in the open! I saw her in a burrow that a squirrel dug out so she was underground before it got dark last night. I assumed that was where she'd stay.
Charity is the one I worried about all night. She's outside too but like Hobo I haven't seen her in 2-3 days because she apparently knew this cold was on the way like he knew.

It poured buckets of rain last night after 10:00 pm so I guess this means Janie came out for the rain. It was still in the 60s at 10 last night so did she not realize it was about to get too cold for her?

My question for those of you who've had outdoor turtles for years is this... do any of yours ever do this? Do they sit out in weather that's too cold for them?
As soon as I found her out there I brought her in & put her in Shell E's heated indoor enclosure. She looks fine, hopefully she is fine, but with it being this cold outside I really don't want to send her back out there.
-----
PHRatz

Ratz,
You're in a part of the country that has a very different climate than ours here, but I'll share a few thoughts anyway.
Our turtles came from a construction site about 5 miles from our home: we created a spacious pen for them and they stay outside year round unless one develops a serious health problem (luckily this rarely happens). Since we're in the same general area, I didn't see any reason to try to shelter them from fluctuations in temperature that they'd been coping with their entire lives.
Going in to hibernation, our turtles don't really seek deep shelter until the temperature drops below 40 degrees for several nights in a row. Even that is variable if daytime temperatures warm considerably: its really when the daytime highs are actually dropping that they turtles really wind down. The ground can take quite a while to cool, so even if air temperatures are low, the ground may be warm a enough to keep them comfortable.

Stephanie

Mine stay out until the last possible moment. I sometimes see them walking around in the mid to high 30's if the sun is strong. Some don't even burrow enough to cover themselves in the winter. I have even seen some with their shells exposed when it is in the single digits and they are fine in the spring. Gets me worried sometimes but instinctively, they know what they are doing - much better than me.

Thanks all of you for responding. I have asked DH to speak to the man who works for the same company he does, who has many box turtles living outdoors on his property....somewhere around 30 of them.
One of theirs has been in their family for over 25 years & they've always kept all of theirs outside. I told my DH to ask him what his box turtles are doing right now in this chilly weather. It'll be very helpful to know that.
This man has told us in the past that sometimes some of their box turtles will come out on a sunny day in Dec. Jan. or Feb., our 3 coldest months.
Then he said those are the ones that don't make it.
EEK!
This year will be my first attempt to allow any to stay outside year round so yes I am more than a little nervous about this.

I'm even more nervous because I still believe Janie had been someone's pet. Charity I know for a fact was someone's pet & last winter since I'd only had her for 3 months by the time fall came around, I didn't allow her to stay outside because her nutritional status wasn't good enough yet.

Hobo is the one I don't worry about because we know for sure he was wild when he was taken out of that dog's mouth. We have several spots where we've laid out cypress mulch, we have several "turtle houses" we've built, a storage building that they can get under, they can get under the house, & there are several abandoned ground squirrel burrows out there too.
Questions on where Janie came from nag at me though & I absolutely adore her. So it really scared me when I saw her soaking wet, as cold as she would be in the refrigerator, and not moving. It scared me more because I already knew that Hobo has found a place to be because he's not out & about.

What you've all said is very helpful, we'll keep what all of you have said in mind, find out what the man with 30 or so boxies has to say, talk to our herp vet when she gets back in town next week, then make a decision.
Tnank you all very much!
Sign me nervous wreck....
-----
PHRatz

I DISAGREE!!!! I have the around the same amount of boxies. (probably a little more) I also have a 25 year old boxie. I have seen them out in the coldest days and they made it through. As long as you have an immediate place for them to hide under - they will do ok. If a boxie comes out & doesn't find a little shelter - he has a problem but if you have piles of leaves or some brush for him to retreat immediately to when he comes out, he will be ok.

>>As long as you have an immediate place for them to hide under - they will do ok. If a boxie comes out & doesn't find a little shelter - he has a problem but if you have piles of leaves or some brush for him to retreat immediately to when he comes out, he will be ok.

If this man has had some die because they came out in winter then he must be doing something wrong. He said those that came out in the cold didn't make it. He found them dead so, if yours do ok & his didn't then he really must be doing something wrong don't you think?
-----
PHRatz

Not neccessarily. I have found that if you have piles of leaves/mulch all around & about, the ones that do come out just burrow themselves back under the leaves. However, if there are no leaves or mulch around, it's sometimes hard for them to find the exact spot they came out from to get away from the cold elements. Being that the ground is hard, dry & sometimes frozen - the situation doesn't give them much choice but to stay out in the open.(Which is a deadly situation) With the leaves & mulch, all they have to do is burrow down into it. I did lose one or two in the very beginning, due to inexperience, but when I have piles of leaves & mulch - they had no problem. I can't say if he did anything wrong. Don't know what his enclosure looks like or whether his boxies are in ideal health when the weather turns cold.
I also weigh the boxies during the fall. If they weigh a lot less than they came out during the spring, I take them in. If they are only a few grams off, it's ok. I have also found that if they could get 3/4's of their body covered, (even with their domes showing) they will survive the winter - provided they are physically fit.

Turtle88 I have no idea either just exactly how this guy houses his turtles other than they're all loose in one big backyard.
I can understand losing some years ago due to inexperience but the impression I got from this guy is that they lose 1 or more every year. That's a scary thought!

I don't know much about their care but I did glean this from them: they feed the turtles things like corn & iceberg lettuce. They used to feed them cat food but they paid attention to me when I said stop doing that. It seems that when I said don't feed corn & iceberg that part fell on deaf ears.

So if his are poorly fed throughout the warm months maybe that's got something to do with losing some in winter. My guess would be yes it does have something to do with it.

I barely know these people & my impression of them is that they think the turtles are neat, fun to have around but they're "just turtles" as if they aren't worthy of the same care their dog & cat are given. In all the years they've kept turtles my impression is that they haven't done much to educate themselves on proper care & feeding.
I don't want advice from them, I only want to know what their turtles are doing right now at this time of year. :-x
-----
PHRatz

If that is what they feed them - a poor diet - then, his boxies are NOT ready for the winter. I would have to agree he IS doing something wrong. Nothing is guaranteed of them surviving a brutal winter. I do lose one every few years. But I get to raise at least 20-30 hatchlings in that time span which I hope eventually makes up for the loss. But Springtime gets me very nervous - Looking around to make sure everyone comes out ok. But even if one doesn't make it - there is nothing I can do. But to give them a poor diet during the year - It's hard to expect them all to survive a winter.

Yeah it's frustrating to meet people who you know are doing something wrong but they won't listen to you!
That's the story of my life. Apparently I don't look like a person who would know diddly squat about reptiles so I get ignored a lot. Of course I don't know it all but I'm not an idiot either.
I guess I need to get some clothes like Steve Irwin wears or something...
-----
PHRatz

Anytime we put a boundary (fence/wall/etc)around the turtles we create an "unnatural" situation, reggardless of how large the outdoor area is. Unless the turtles have total freedom to leave one habitat for another, I think it is a mistake to think, "the turtle knows best" about what to do (because their options are limited by our enclosure). I have kept my eastern box turtles outdoors year round (Southern Wisconsin) in a large habitat, and majority of them do well. But I have lost an adult each of the last two winters. Each time, the turtle came out too early (March) and was wandering around in VERY cold weather, while all the others stayed dug under. Each time I would put the turtle back underground and cover it over, but it would persist in coming out. And in each instance the turtle died. Why did they come out early? Did they have some occult physiologic condition that made them do this? Or was the combination of their hibernaculum site and their health not adequate, causing an urge to change things? In naturalistic studies, box turtles have been shown to "choose" a wide range of sites for winter, some of them pretty crummy for survival. And there is a yearly winter die-off as part of the natural life course, sometimes this winter kill can be quite substantial. In short, it is always complicated to try and mimic Mother Nature. Most of my colleagues here in the Midwest have chosen to bring their turtles in (to an man-made hibernaculum) for the winter, as leaving them out seems too risky. I have prepared a space in my garage for this winter, and am planning on bringing them in and controlling the conditions as best I can. Like most things in life, there are pros and cons to either approach.

To "let nature take its course" is not to leave the animals at the mercy of chaos, but rather to let them do what their whole system - metabolism, behavior and timing - has been geared for through trial and error since times immemorial.

Box turtles don't mandate two simple sets of temperatures, what we tend to think of as temps that are warm enough and temps that are too low. They are able to use many temps in between active and torpor. Here they don't function at the levels we're accustomed to seeing and they do it according to seasonal/temperature-based timing. As you have seen, different specimens will make differently of those varying lower temps. Some hit the decks promptly, others hang out past what us endotherms would expect of a critter with now-truly cold blood.

Although winter freezing does kill some animals, both in captivity and in the wild, most manage to avoid this problem; box turtles are seemingly among the more capable organisms when it comes to supercooling.

What you want to be careful about is the indoor-again-outdoor-again scenario, as this can throw an already "unbalanced" thermal-schedule completely off track. Most years give box turtles a nice series of jerking-around before they can finally drop into true hibernation, and the turtles are equipped to (usually) deal with those times. It's when our good intentions go to tampering with and interrupting that part of the annual cycle that things can really go wrong. Keep you eyes out for any sign of waning health, and provided nothing surfaces, there will hopefully be little problem for your animals.

>>What you want to be careful about is the indoor-again-outdoor-again scenario, as this can throw an already "unbalanced" thermal-schedule completely off track. Most years give box turtles a nice series of jerking-around before they can finally drop into true hibernation, and the turtles are equipped to (usually) deal with those times. It's when our good intentions go to tampering with and interrupting that part of the annual cycle that things can really go wrong. Keep you eyes out for any sign of waning health, and provided nothing surfaces, there will hopefully be little problem for your animals.

Definately keeping this statement in mind. I know this is true because in Oct. just when I think they've all gone under for the winter there have been years when I've spotted a wild one out & about at the end of Oct. After we've had major temperature changes already. I know that some of the wild ones don't go under for winter until sometime in Nov. probably about the same time when the Bermuda grass goes dormant.
Thanks a lot
from the nervous wreck.
-----
PHRatz

We are just starting to get into fall weather in Oklahoma. Daytime temps were in the high 80s and 90s all through September. The night before last it was supposed to drop into the low 60s and in the afternoon, even though it was still warm, some of my turtles were digging burrows.

Yesterday was cooler, high 60s, low 70s, I think, and it was going to drop down to the high 40s, low 50s and they were all hidden by sundown. This afternoon, many of them are out and it is in the 70s.

Bottom line is that I won't expect to see them go down for good until late Novemeber.

One thing I learned is....if you are already into winter and you are having some warmer days and there is one turtle you consistantly find up on warmer days(unlike the others) go ahead and bring him in. I had an ornate that I was observing doing this a few years ago. It was almost spring but he was the only one up. One day a cold front was moving in and I observed this turtle burrowing down below the hay and and I had every reason to believe that he had buried himself in the dirt below the hay. After the front had passed, I found him dead, closer to the surface of the hay, he had frozen to death. How I wish I had brought him in! Last fall, when we had some sudden cold snaps, I brought in a couple of turtles that didn't seem to be "settled" yet. When it warmed up, I put them back out and they were hibernating by the next round of cold weather.

Hope this helps some....

Lisa,
I am so sorry you lost that one. I'm so afraid something like that will happen to Janie & if it did I couldn't live with myself!
I've lived in OKC before so I know what the climate is like, our climate here is just as hot in summer as yours is but much less humid.
We too are having our very first spell of fall weather right now. I said I'd kept Charity in last year because I'd had her for only 3 months or so when fall arrived. I knew her nutritional status was poor so I couldn't let her stay out.

Janie is the one who scared the heck out of me sitting in 45 degree pouring rain. She was all closed up in that cold. I got to thinking I've had her for only 4 months now. Maybe I should play it safe as I did with Charity & allow her to stay in this year.

Today it's warmer but still cool enough that the tortoise won't come out of her heated mansion. The sun is shining & Hobo is out basking in the Superman Pose on the driveway as I type this. I found out he's been staying under that storage building. I KNOW he'll be fine because I know he knows what to do.
I think I'm just going to have to stick with the idea that Janie stays inside this year or I'll never get any sleep this winter because of the worry! LOL
-----
PHRatz

I asked the exact same question last fall and was told to relax and that the box turtles will go down when they like. I had one that stayed out in the cold much longer than the other two. Hope this helps.

>> Hope this helps.

It does & thank you for the input.
-----
PHRatz