NA Wood Turtle Care sheet / Videos / Pictures ?

Ghazan

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Any good videos, pictures or care sheets primarily for juvenile NA wood turtles ~3 inches. I've read Al Roach's book and Chris Leone's online guide but looking for some examples of how people keep juveniles.

I had all 4 of them in a rubbermaid container that was split 50/50 water and land but felt it was getting too small, so I have them in a Medium Waterland Tub now, but I switched water area to land (the larger portion) and the land is now water (smaller portion). I don't see them using the water portion in the waterland tub as much as I did in the rubbermaid container. The land is a mix of top soil and mulch.

I end up putting them in a kiddie pool few hours every day with a basking rock and they seem to move around more in a water setup, so I'm thinking of making the Waterland tub true to it's construction 75% water and 25% land, but the water will be ~8 inches deep...
 

mark1

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their use of water vs land is age related , seasonal , and time of day , as is their use of water and land type ……… my opinion is they need an adequate amount of water to feel safe in , submerge and hide , and lots of land , i'm sure they appreciate moving water …….. I seen a thread on here "what your tortoises do all day" , my turtles chase the sun all day ……. I have quite a bit of literature on habitat use of na wood turtles , there is quite a bit out there ,I ran across these two looking for something online ………. they're never naturally found far from a river


chasing the sun slowly

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1365-2656.2009.01555.x

HABITAT SELECTION BY WOOD TURTLES (CLEMMYS INSCULPTA): AN APPLICATION OF PAIRED LOGISTIC REGRESSION

http://umanitoba.ca/institutes/natural_resources/pdf/M-1637_Compton_etal_2002Wood_turtle_habitat.pdf
 

Ghazan

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Thanks for the articles, was primarily looking for examples pics/videos of how to raise 0-2 year old NA woods, specifically if I should do primarily aquatic or land setup...
 

mark1

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your answer is they need as much of both as is possible , your going to need a lot of room for 4 wood turtles , they are often unfriendly to each other , and grow as fast , actually faster , than any turtles I have ……… the one study I posted tracked 37 turtles , may through September , females during nesting season were excluded ….. they had 1155 plotted locations , they were found in water 16% of the time , marsh/bogs 34% of the time , scrub , shrub , forest , clearcut , bank, gravel ( land) 49% of the time …….. they spend 100% of the time in water during winter ….. don't know how folks keep them , but that is how they keep themselves...…..

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