Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I think Chip is on the way to being completely healthy at least on the inside. It'll take a very long time for his shell to heal but ever since the day he ate for me after he had pulled the feeding tube out, he's been eating on a regular basis without a problem.
He's also bathing daily & seems to enjoy that then he walks in the turtle proofed part of the house. He gets real exercise since DH never puts his shoes away Chip uses them to climb on kind of like mountain climbing.
I let him walk around today while the girls were out. Charity is huge, she weighs nearly 2 lbs, Janie is over her illness now & eating like a normal turtle, Shell E is... well... the usual Shell E aka the spoiled princess.
I had the girls in the utility room feeding them live foods. So far I haven't been able to get Chip to eat live food & thought ok I'll bring him in & let him see the girls eat the live food so that he can get the idea.

Yeah he had ideas all right but none of them had ANYTHING to do with food ROFL!
He went after Charity the largest one. Chip is very small compared to any of our other boxies but he is really tiny compared to Charity so he's obviously fairly young & of course he goes for the biggest girl.
Poor Chip, his entire plastron is acrylic now so all he did was slide around. I felt so sorry for him I had to remove him from the scene. Of course I didn't want him to find any success with what was on his mind either.
I am happy though to see that he is feeling well enough to think about something other than feeling the pain he must've been in when he first got here.
He must really be out of the woods now. YAY
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PHRatz

LOL poor guy, at least he is obviously feeling better. When he is healed and lives outdoors are you going to build him a seperate pen so he doesn't come into contact with hobo?

n/p
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Robins Critters
1.0 Corn snakes Jack Skellington
1.1 Hog Island Boas Harley & Isaboa
0.1 Albino Sonoran Gopher Snake Jasmine
1.3 Leopard Geckos Yoda, Geo, Tang, Ginger
0.1.1 Crested Geckos Peek & Boo
1.0 Blue Tongue Skink Indigo
0.0.2 Eastern Box Turtles Squirtle & Yurtle
0.1 Pacman Frog Buffy the Cricket Slayer
0.0.1 Sulawesi Red Toad Mr. Toad
0.2 Tiger Salamanders Tiger & Sally
1.1.3 Firebelly Newts Wayne Newton, Isaac Newton, Fig Newton, Olivia Newton John & Thandie Newton
1.1 Cats Gus & Mena

>>LOL poor guy, at least he is obviously feeling better. When he is healed and lives outdoors are you going to build him a seperate pen so he doesn't come into contact with hobo?

ACK the pen.. DH has not had time to build my new pen, he's working too much so the bricks are still sitting in a pile. I'm thinking since it's not built yet why not build it as planned but then add a wall to separate male from females. Chip can be in the male side by himself, Hobo can keep the rest of the yard as his territory since it's always been his territory.
If any more needy males come along, the vet is going to have to keep them herself.

As for getting that pen built by the time I really need it in a couple of months I've suggested that DH get a couple of guys from his main job to come over buy them some beer, cook hamburgers & hotdogs for them, then get them to help build it.
He thinks that for a free meal with beer he can get them to show up. I think he can too I just hope it doesn't look crooked when they're done lol.
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PHRatz

LOL maybe you should limit the beer while the actual building of the pen is being done!

>>LOL maybe you should limit the beer while the actual building of the pen is being done!

yeah that does sound like a plan.
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PHRatz

The trick is to wait on the beer until AFTER the work is done. Mel don't know southern men and beer.

Glad Chip is doing so much better. This reply is more about the pen though. My husband is also fixing a pen for my turtles.....but he chose to do it with landscaping logs. I really wanted a cement or brick one, but I guess I shouldn't complain as long as I get some kind of pen for them. Hopefully some day I can get that pen replaced with a brick one. I really wanted one to go all the way across the backyard so they would have lots of space to walk in, but I guess since I usually let mine come and go as they want most of the time anyway, that the smaller version will be ok.

As for the males and females being separated.......I still am not sure which ones are male and which female......so guess I will have to keep an eye on them this round and see who approaches who. Guess that would be one way to really know for sure the sex. All but two of my turtles are 4-5 years old...... with the oldest one being who knows? He was owned for years so he could be any age. The youngest is less than a year old. (Not a baby from any of my turtles......but was given to me as a hatchling because the lady's dog had killed all the babies but this one. Which by the way is kept in the house for now as I didn't want it to hibernate, and it will be kept separate from the others until it is large like them.) I don't care to have anymore turtles......so I suppose I should really be diligent and separate my sexes too! ...... 9boxies

Our pen will be brick because we have enough cinderblock left over from the fence that was built in March/April. We wouldn't have any left over at all except for the fact that we have a couple of people in the neighborhood who think they're the official "hall monitors." That's a long story nobody would want to hear :::rolling eyes::::
We used to have a box turtle pen that was made with what people around here call ranch fencing, but the tortoise stuck her "arm" through it & ruined it. It had squares that looked like windows, so if you were inside the pen & she walked up it looked like King Kong peering through the windows. LOL
Then when they built the new fence that pen had to be torn down anyway and since the tortoise can bend the wire we don't want to go with that type of fencing again.

Sexing the turtles:
Your boxies are ornates too aren't they? I'm sorry now I can't remember exactly what species yours are. With the ornates it's so very easy to tell which is male & which is female.. with adults anyway. The male tail is so much larger than the females, there is just no mistaking it. The males have much more bulky back legs too.
I recently read in a book that male ornates do not have a concave plastron but wondered what planet that author was from. They most certainly do... it was an old book so that may explain a mistaken statement. Chip DID have a concave plastron but after getting it broken it may never be that way again.
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PHRatz