The EXTREME cold winter is here

mark1

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That's a damned nightmare

it's a perspective thing , i saw fargo ND weather on the news this morning , it appears they'd find -1 a pretty nice day ..............
winters are a nice break from caring for them , as long as nothing goes wrong ..... long power outages are a concern ,, or losing water ...... trying to find why your losing water in the dark in a single digit blizzard after driving in this crap from working 10hrs can be a bit much ,it's another benefit to covering the ponds .......... and springtime when they come back out is like getting new turtles , it's something that you really look forward to ........

i'm looking forward to seeing this guy , first winter i left him out , i left him out until december last year , so he could "practice" for the real thing .........
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Yvonne G

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We've had a pretty mild winter so far with only two nights of frost, but everyone outside who brumates has been brumating. Day before yesterday when I was walking past the box turtle yard I saw the female gulf coast peeking out from under the leaves. So I guess they're starting to wake up.
 

mark1

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I'm so neurotic I couldn't stand my animals being under all that cold....bring'em in the house!

when you see how healthy they appear in the spring , makes it hard to think of doing otherwise ..... i am of the opinion running down their reserves during the 6 months they don't eat is healthy for them......i guess it's possible they look so healthy because if they're not they don't survive it ,but as long as they don't get frozen i doubt that's the case......
these turtles here are all native to here , i give them every advantage they could possibly find in a natural hibernacula...... the water turtles are in extremely well oxygenated clean water, they are never in danger of having to survive being frozen, they have really easy access to the surface , their active season is extended easily by 2 months ..... the box turtles got dirt that was loosened down more than a foot for them, they had 2 feet of grass and leaves piled on them , a tarp to retain some ground heat and keep some of the snow melt off them , and a foot or two of snow on top of them , if it doesn't snow enough i shovel snow on top of them ......i'd guess i increase the ground temp for these guys by at least one plant zone , the water turtles i'm pretty sure i increase by 2 plant zones .....

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went up to 24 last night and all the ice on the ponds melted ....
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mark1

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We've had a pretty mild winter so far with only two nights of frost, but everyone outside who brumates has been brumating. Day before yesterday when I was walking past the box turtle yard I saw the female gulf coast peeking out from under the leaves. So I guess they're starting to wake up.
the box turtles here come out in may sometime ...... we had a mild december , but we're back to near normal for january .....
 

ZEROPILOT

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Tonight my lone Redfoot, Julio is coming inside and I've set the pond heater at 85.
Hopefully the fish will be ok.
Itll get into the upper 40s tonight.
It is most unusual
 
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ZEROPILOT

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How cold did you get last night and how did your pond do? We dipped down to 34.7 last night.
I believe it got to 48.
I checked this morning and I saw a lot of fish swimming around near the heater.
It worked. And there's almost no chance of it getting colder than that.
 

ZEROPILOT

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The iguanas will be falling outta' the trees!!
This would kill most of them.
It happened about 10 or 12 years ago.
Iguanas can do 45. They can't do 35.
It also kills a lot of exotic fishes in our local waterways.
 

Lyn W

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The weather has gone crazy!!!
Wrap up warm Ed, I hope it's not as bad for you as they expect.
 
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