Young Boxies Question

[sparkofdestiny]

I had a question about young boxies:
My cousins husband recently adopted 3 females and 1 male young boxies, we know they are females/males because of the tails, claws, coloring and eyes.

Anyway they are all in the 2.5-3.5 length range, he's had them for about 4 months, when ever he gets a new turtle/tortoise he keeps each one quarantines for 5 months to ensure safety and to see if any are going to grow extensively, he likes only putting turtles/tortoise of within the same 1 inch size together in an enclosure. He plans on starting a turtle farm within the next 5 years so he's buying any turtles/tortoises he can to build up his breeding circle.

Anyway he has heard a lot of different things about when box turtles sexually mature and asked me if i would ask some people and get back to him so i figured asking a group of turtle experts here would get some answers

He wants to know if putting these 2.5-3.5 inch boxie juveniles into the same enclosure if they will start mating or if they need to be bigger first.

He doesn't know how old they are, but given their size pretty young i would guess any estimates on that would be great too.

thanks in advance

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[yagyujubei]

I'm going to say that they're probably 2 to 4 years old. I wouldn't be concerned about mating at least until they get close to 5". I would keep them together.

 

[sparkofdestiny]

oh and i forgot to mention that they can't fully close their shells using their hinge, i read somewhere that this means their not 18 months old yet is that true

thanks yagyujubei

 

[yagyujubei]

By a year, all of mine can fully close up, but I almost never see it, and it's hard to make them do it because they're so used to handling.

oh and i forgot to mention that they can't fully close their shells using their hinge, i read somewhere that this means their not 18 months old yet is that true

thanks yagyujubei

 

[lisa127]

These boxies sound very, very young to me. Too young to breed and too young to accurately sex even. I have a boxie that will be 2 years old in a couple of months and s/he is 5 inches SCL. Granted, s/he is a big one...but still at those sizes those are young boxies.

 

[Millerlite]

Yeah very young boxies, I wouldn't even expect them breeding and Laying in 5 years. But raise them enjoy them. I would put them together too they should be fine