What do you feed a baby box turtle

[Kristin n Abigail]

I need help with my daughters turtle. It is a baby box turtle. Trying to take care of but I don't feelike I am going a good job. Help!! Not eating!!

 

[mark1]

bloodworms , maggots , moistened fish or turtle pellets , chopped up redworms , wet dog food , i'd guess you could use cat food ? chopped up or smashed minnows or guppies ............. just keep it available , it can help to put them in a pail with a 1/4 inch or so of water with their food in it , along with a couple leaves to hide under , leave them in there with the food for a half hour or so .......... or something like that ........ keep it in a plastic bin of soaked sphagnum moss , so there's about a 1/4 inch of standing water in the bottom . if you feed them in a separate bucket , you can clean the moss a couple times before you throw it out and replace it ...... with a temp gradient on the hot end upper 80's and colder end high 70's .....

 

[lisa127]

Red wigglers and soaked reptomin were favorites when mine were babies. Don't stand there and try to watch.

 

[TammyJ]

Maggots....very nutritious. Makes me feel like getting KFC. Just joking (?)

 

[mark1]

they're also small and they move , which makes them a very attractive food

Edible Maggots - Nutritional Content of a Maggot
In addition to containing various amounts of fatty acids, amino acids, protein, fat and energy content, the larvae of the common housefly( Musca domestica), more commonly known by the unflattering moniker “maggot”, sports a whopping 2,010 mg of calcium per 100g of insect dry matter.
Since the RDA (Recommended daily allowance) for the average adult is only 1,000 mg of calcium, this means that a serving of 100g provides over twice as much as the average adult needs to be healthy!

The same amount of insect dry matter also provides around 1,320 mg of phosphorus. Teenagers require around 1,200 mg of phosphorus, and the average adult requires around 700 mg, so either way, consuming 100g of common housefly larvae dry matter should eliminate any worries one might have about deficiencies in these vitamins(unless of course you have some sort of medical condition which requires one to take a great deal more than this).

Housefly larvae also contains an astonishingly high amount of iron. At 60g per 100g of insect dry matter, such a serving far exceeds the RDA of the demographic most in it of it: pregnant women. The Linus Pauling Institute recommends 27 mg of iron for pregnant women a day. Male teenagers require 11g, and adults, 8 mg. Female teenagers typically need 15 mg a day and adults, 18g.

At 24 mg of zinc, housefly larvae provide more than the daily required amount for all demographics. Your typical teenager-to-adult needs between 8 and 11 mg a day, with an RDA slightly higher for pregnant and breastfeeding women. Furthermore, the insect contains 6 mg of manganese, more than the daily required amount of around 2 mg for your typical teenage-to-adult demographic.

Amino acids (mg/100g of protein
Fatty acid composition [% fatty acids] of edible insects
Protein, fat and energy content - Nutritional composition [%] and energy content [kcal/100 g] of edible insects (based on dry matter)



Phe + Tyr(i) 127 mg
Threonine(i) 36 mg
Tryptophan(i) 50 mg
Valine(i) 46 mg
Arginine(i) 57 mg
Serine 88 mg
Proline(i) 25 mg
Alanine(i) 76 mg
Glycine(i) 51 mg
Glutamic Acid(i) 89 mg
C14:0(k) 7 mg
C16:0(k) 27 mg
C18:0(k) 2 mg
SFA(k) 36 mg
C16:1 n7(k) 26 mg
C18:1 n9(k) 22 mg
MUFA(k) 48 mg
C18:2 n6(k) 16 mg
PUFA(k) 16 mg
SFA/UFA(k) 1 mg
Calcium(g) 2010 mg
Phosphorus(g) 1320 mg
Sodium(g) 660 mg
Iron(g) 60 mg
Zinc(g) 24 mg
Manganese(g) 6 mg
Copper(g) 3 mg
Protein 64
Fat 24 mg
Energy content 552

All nutrition information retrieved from: Hwangbo, J., Hong, E. C., Jang, A., Kang, H. K. et al., Utilization of house fly-maggots, a feed supplement in the production of broiler chickens. J. Environ. Biol. 2009, 30, 609–614.
All RDA material obtained from the Linus Pauling Institute.

 

[TammyJ]

Blimey!!! What a beauty! Maggots ROCK.

Really impressive information - but what do they mean by "insect dry matter"?

 

[Kapidolo Farms]

Blimey!!! What a beauty! Maggots ROCK.

Really impressive information - but what do they mean by "insect dry matter"?

Water removed.

 

[mark1]

means without moisture , dehydrated , so it'd take like 3 dried maggots to equal 1 live one , like dry dog food

 

[Gillian M]

I need help with my daughters turtle. It is a baby box turtle. Trying to take care of but I don't feelike I am going a good job. Help!! Not eating!!

Please give the tort time to adapt: torts do NOT like change therefore it will take him time to get used to the new place, climate, enclosure, etc. Give him daily soaks in warm water so as to avoid dehydration and pyramiding.

Any pics for your tort and his enclosure would enable us to help you more easily.