Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi all, new to the forums, have a few concerns about my turtle (named Hat) and have no where else to turn.

My turtle is acting very...strange. Every day I scrub his shell and let him run around my apartment. I give him an earthworm every now and again and he loves them. Whenever he sees the worm he just dives at it and inhales the bloody thing. Then he looks around as if he were searching for parts he missed.

It isn’t as if he is starving. I feed him once every day, a full bowl of peas, corn, mustard greens and turtle pellet food. He picks through it and eats the peas and corn every time, every last piece, but leaves the mustard greens and never eats the turtle food, which is distressing to me.

I have had him for a month or so now and believe he has gotten used to me. I hold him for thirty minutes each day and let him crawl around on my chest. Half the time he sits there and looks at me, the other half he will crawl up on my shoulders. Sometimes he acts scared or nervous of me but most of the time he just walks around and stares at me. If I move he gets scared, but if I am still he walks right up to my face.

He gnaws on my chest of drawers. He walks right up to them and bites at the corner of the drawer. He will do that for fifteen minutes or so before wandering off. I have some cuttlebone in his cage but I never see him use it, and yet he gnaws on my furniture. He also bites at the metal track of a drawer that is lying in the middle of my floor. He bats his head against the drawer over and over, as if he is trying to get under it.

When on my chest, he bites at the buttons of my shirt. I tried placing food on the buttons but he never eats it. Sometimes he will climb up and burrow himself in my beard. When I am walking around barefoot, he charges at my feet as if he wants to attack them, but then stops a few inches away from me and then, after staring at my feet for a while, looks up at me. Today as I was resting in my chair I had my hands dangling at my side. He raced at me and ran right up to my fingers and tried to attack them, but he was too short. He stood under my hands with his mouth open and his neck outstretched trying to nibble my fingers, but when I moved my hand he flinched.

He likes to hide under a sheet near my bed for only a moment or so, and then runs off. He explores my apartment for hours on end as if he is foraging, but I feed him well. There is no way he can be hungry.

Anyhow, he is a very, very strange turtle. Either he is the most curious turtle on the face of the earth, or is very, very dumb, heh. Can’t help but love him though.

Any thoughts, suggestions, or advice?

How old is your turtle, baby or adult? What species of box is he?
Corn & peas really are not appropriate foods for a box turtle of any species. It may be that he does feel hungry & when you feed him an earthworm which is appropriate food for him he may be looking around for more parts because he wants more.

Let me give you an analogy. If I cook then eat a good meal in the evening that contains all the componants that humans need to be healthy, I'm not going to feel hungry again until the next day.
If instead of a good meal I eat a handful of cookies & candy after I get over feeling nauseated for doing that lol, I'm going to feel very hungry because I just ate a lot of empty calories.
Corn and peas are giving your turtle empty calories.

Try feeding your turtle more things that are good for him, try some gut loaded & vitamin/mineral powdered crickets, a variety of worms to start with. If he's ornate he's going to want to eat more bugs than anything else, but if he's another species of box & is adult he's going to want more salad type foods with bugs less often.
Do a search of the Kingsnake website, there are box turtle care articles on this site, check some of those out & also this one:
http://boxturtlesite.org/
and this one:
http://www.anapsid.org/box.html

Let us know what type he is & how old, good luck with him.
-----
PHRatz

I am not sure how to tell what type of box turtle he is. He has yellow stripes going down on his shell and one long stripe that goes from his neck to his tail. He has bright red/orange dots on his legs and arms. He is male, for he has a concave plastron. I do not know how old he is, but I counted the rings on his shell. I could not get an accurate count, for the ones on the top had 9 rings, whilst the ones on the edge of the shell all had 7 rings. So I figure he is between 9 and 7 years old.

I don't think I will be able to feed him crickets or earthworms as his primary diet. I do not have the ability to get to a pet store often enough, and there is no way I can harvest worms or bugs on my own in this city. I figured adding the turtle food and the mustard greens would keep him healthy, but he refuses to eat both these items. I considered feeding him lettuce, but lettuce is 90% water and I figured there wouldn’t be much nutritional value in the lettuce.

What else could I try feeding him? I have a box of worms that I give him as a special treat, once every few days, and can only refill the box once a week or so.

Thanks for the advice!

It is nice that you are checking resources and getting suggestions for your turtle. It is obvious you care for your pet. I agree with suggestions of PHRATZ above, and especially think the boxturtlesite is a good one. Go through it carefully and you'll get a lot of information to help you care for your turtle. Here are some of my ideas:
I think the frequent biting behavior on inanimate objects is a sign that something is not right in the captive environment you have provided...the turtle is trying to get something missing in it's diet. Since he consistently eats worms, try chopping up some worms and mixing the wriggling parts with a veggie/fruit/calcium (alternate with vitamin) mixture. This sounds gross but will sometimes get the turtle turned on to eating other things.
You cannot tell the age of the turtle by growth rings on the shell (these are more related to growth spurts than to years).
Even though you might enjoy having the turtle climb around on your chest, the turtle very likely doesn't like this and would be more comfortable with all fours on terra firma. Maybe you can get to enjoy him just as much watching him walk around you.
Good luck with your turtle, sounds like you enjoy him as much as I do mine.

Well I fed Hat the rest of the earth worms today (there were about 4 left) and he inhaled them like a little glutton. He ate right from my hand too (although I don’t know if I will do this anymore, for he seemed more interested in my fingers than the worms at times). I took your advice and have tried to stay away from the peas and corn. I filled his bowl with mustard greens with a few peas here and there to stimulate his hunger, and sprinkled the bowl with the turtle food I have. He seems fairly interested in the bowl but is just pecking at it, when before he would munch on the corn and peas quite eagerly.

I also ordered 250 freeze dried crickets and some shrimp larvae. I didn’t know they came freeze dried, so this will prove much easier than introducing live crickets. As soon as they arrive I will alternate insects for veggies; one day his bowl will have crickets or shrimp larvae, the other day he will have mustard greens and whatever else I conjure up.

Does that sound like a plan? I am concerned that he may just not eat the days I give him veggies, though, since as of yet he has not eaten the greens. I guess I will wait and see what happens.

As for holding him on my chest, yeah, it is fun, but can be tiresome at times. I only do it because the book I read recommended it so that I can get the turtle used to me. Lately I just let him climb up on my shoulder and he sits there looking around from his lofty height for about 15 minutes until I set him down. Then he explores my room very eagerly, squeezes into every nook and cranny, and tries to bite everything he sees. Today he charged at my fingers, he nibbled on my beard, he munched on some newspaper, tried to bite some electrical wiring (unplugged, of course), made some swipes at my socks and pecks at lint on the floor. And that was after I fed him the four worms, heh. Maybe the crickets and shrimp will do the trick. I took some pictures; I will try to get them up in a few days. I even got one of him yawning. I never knew turtles yawned.

Good deal, I'm glad you will be able to post some photos of him, I was going to ask if you have any.
It's good too to replace the peas & corn with dark leafy greens. Depending on where you live some grocery stores sell dandelion greens for people to eat, those are good for them too.

ZooMed packages a lot of bugs in a can that aren't freeze dried but are juicy vitamin laced bugs.. I don't know if your box would go for those or not but they may be something to think about so that you can provide a variety of foods.
They also sell a sweet smelling canned box turtle food that none of mine will eat but if one would it could be something to add now & then for more variety.
Variety in foods is good for them & adults that are well fed do not need to be fed daily. Every other day will work, I don't feed mine the same food each time I feed them.
Another thing some of mine like to eat are thawed out frozen blood worms that are sold as fish food, my aquatic turtles like those too.
Then there are the pellets, EJ recently said that Mazuri is producing a box turtle pellet now, that might be another thing to look into as Mazuri is one of the better brands.

The goal for me is to always provide a variety of foods that are good for them so that they can have a well balanced diet all around.
I breed mealworms & 2 different species of cockroaches for mine to eat but I realize not everyone would want to do that. If you are inclined to do it, I can tell you it's very handy to have a lot of live turtle food around the house that they like. I know it's healthy because I know how well the bugs are fed and I don't have to run to the pet store all the time for live foods.
I save a lot of money by not burning gas to get to the store & then buying from the store.
-----
PHRatz

I have been trying to breed mealworms for years. I feed organic bran, rolled oats, sliced potatoes and the occasional stale cereal grain. I am not being successful in producing young. I live in Maui and the climate is mild here. I have a problem with keeping out ants. I keep geckos and anoles by screening in the tub. Any suggestions? thanks.

>>I have been trying to breed mealworms for years. I feed organic bran, rolled oats, sliced potatoes and the occasional stale cereal grain. I am not being successful in producing young. I live in Maui and the climate is mild here. I have a problem with keeping out ants. I keep geckos and anoles by screening in the tub. Any suggestions? thanks.

I live in a hot desert so it's pretty dry here all the time. My mealies do well though even in the dryness, I think keeping the lid on the tub keeps the humidity up for them.
What I did was buy 3 small Rubbermaid boxes, I guess you'd call them shoe boxes although they wouldn't hold a pair of large men's shoes. They only cost a dollar each, I use one at a time sort of.. I'll explain that in a second.
I drilled a few small holes in the lids for air but nothing too big can get in through those holes. I keep the tub inside the house so no ants get in but I if I had it outside then yes it'd be loaded with ants.
I keep the tub filled with cornmeal, oatmeal, I think last time I cleaned them out I used some whole wheat flour too. Powdered milk in the mix is good for them as well, it'll give the worms a little calcium. If I have old cereal I'll grind it up & throw it in the mix too.
I use a couple of potato slices which have to be changed at least once a week so they'll have a source of moisture, I've tried apple slices but that attracts fruit flies. Sometimes I'll use carrots or celery if I have them. I'll toss in a leaf of collards, turnip, or other leafy greens if I have that.
Then I ignore them & they eventually turn into beetles that lay eggs. When the beetles die off I clean them out of the container.
I bought a huge tea strainer for a dollar at the Dollar Tree & I use that to sift through all of it when the container needs cleaning.
When it gets really dirty looking in the tub & also looks like they've eaten a lot of the meal I'll put fresh meal into another other box then sift through all the old meal & pick out the live worms that I can see & move them to the fresh box. Then I keep the old box full of meal around for 4-6 weeks and I sift through it once a week. You can't see the eggs but there are always some left in the old meal that will hatch, so after I've sifted through the old meal once a week for 4-6 weeks I'll stop finding anything alive and then I throw it out. The first time I tried breeding them I threw all the old meal out too soon & lost the whole colony then had to start over.
I keep 3 boxes so that one box is always empty & clean that way I have one box always ready to be filled when I need to change them over to a fresh box.
That's basically all I do, they breed like crazy for me. It's great because I have 2 aquatic turtles that love to eat the worms too.
Once you get the hang of it, it's easy.
The roaches are much easier to breed but that's another story. lol
-----
PHRatz

thanks. I will try the sifting and add in the veggies. I keep everything organic, and can certainly add those in. I am new to using a forum. Is it kosher to go off on a tangent like this? mahalo/p

> Is it kosher to go off on a tangent like this? mahalo/p

Sure because it's still on topic. I'm breeding them for turtle food, Laure breeds them for turtle food, that's on topic as far as I'm concerned.
-----
PHRatz

btw I like to keep things organic too as much as I can.
I forgot to mention that I feed the bugs the powdery left overs from the parrot's organic pellet food too. I've used ground up organinc spelt flakes after they were stale because I had some here.
Anything ground up or powdery that looks like good food for them goes in the mix.
-----
PHRatz

thanks for the mealworm advice. Got a whole new batch going./p

>>thanks for the mealworm advice. Got a whole new batch going./p

You're welcome, let us know if it works out or not & if not maybe some of us can make some suggestions.
-----
PHRatz

Welcome to the forum!

I just wanted to tell you a couple of things I have done to get my turtles to eat a more varied diet.

My turtles love the Can-O-whatevers. There are Can-O-Caterpillars, Crickets, Grasshoppers, etc. I don't remember who makes them though.

I could also get them to like veggies by dipping a worm into baby food vegetables, or dipping veggies into babyfood meat. You could also mix the meat with some chopped up veggies. Once they started liking the food, I would slowly add less and less baby food.

Good luck!
-----
0.1.0 ornate box turtle
1.0.0 eastern box turtle
0.1.0 Australian shepard
2.2.0 chickens
3.2.0 children (do I still count the married ones?)
1.0.0 husband