Jenn and Boxies from Texas

jenwhiddon

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Dec 14, 2016
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5
Location (City and/or State)
Texas
Hello all! I am Jenn, I live in Texas, about 30 miles south of Houston, in Brazoria County. I have two box turtles, one male, one female. I am fairly certain they are three-toed boxies; they were both given to me with relatively little to no info. First a friend brought us the male, who I loved from the moment he was placed in my hand! and then because I had him, shortly thereafter, maybe a month or so, someone brought me the female. She is quite a bit shyer and it's taken me a bit to warm up to her; at first, I really considered finding her another home, but after having her for a few months, I appreciate her quiet beauty. The male is a scrappy lil bugger; nothing scares him, he likes to explore the house and has gotten himself into a few spots that just make me shake my head. He is pretty small but somehow I get the feeling he is not young. He has an area of his shell that obviously was damaged severely and is permanently deformed. I would guess it happened years ago because of the wear present on the area, but anyone's guess is as good as mine as to what happened to him. Currently, he has no injuries, parasites, or other health concerns. He is right at 335 grams, 4.75" SCL, and isn't very 'tall'. The female is larger, 480 grams, 5" SCL. She is also in great health but has two tiny round 1/16" pits; one on either side of her carapace, which I thought must've been from a dog or other animal, but they haven't healed at all and I keep seeing others mentioning their turtles having the same pits but with no explanation, so maybe it is some kind of 'phenomena', beats me. They currently live in a large plastic tub, just because it's what I had on hand when they moved in, but to give them some exercise and excitement or whatever you want to call it, I either take them outside while I putter around in the yard or I allow them to get out and roam the house for a few hours everyday. We are in the market for new housing for them, they need more space and I'd like something a bit more attractive in my living room. Of course, deciding what we want with keeping functionality in mind has us at a crossroads. We're down to about a dozen final choices and we're debating whether to house them separately. And in the course of spending several hours looking for ideas online, I ended up here at tortoiseforum. I was trying to view photos of other people's enclosures and kept getting a mssg that to view them, I needed to be a member, so I finally registered and here I am. I had never had any reptiles other than a Pacman frog that I had as a teen, but I am an animal lover and have had a variety of pets over the last 20 years, fish, birds, guinea pigs, chickens, dogs, cats, squirrels, and my grandma had iguanas forever, my sister raised hermit crabs for awhile and my parents have an outdoor pond with red eared sliders so I knew a bit about the type of care the turtles would need. I have been trying to learn all I can about what they need and there is a lot of conflicting info as well as opinions out there! I would like to learn more about a few other aspects of box ownership, such as raising my own supply of feeder insects, namely worms, since i am an avid organic gardener and like the dual benefits of farming worms. Also I'm fascinated with the little bit of info I've come across about the studies done on head-starting hatchlings to release into the wild, and man, does that seems to be a very controversial topic! I am one of those 'researcher' type of folks, full of useless trivia and facts no one even wanted to know, lol. Any topic at hand, I want to read about from as many different sources as possible and then form my own take on things, so everyone feel free to alert me to any studies or articles of interest. Thanks so much!

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Yvonne G

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Hi Jenn, and welcome to the Forum!

I don't know if anyone really knows what causes those holes on each side of the three-toed box turtles' carapaces, but it's quite common to see.

Be careful taking them out. They are pretty sneaky and can disappear in no time at all. Likewise, be careful putting them on the floor in the house. We've read many a horror story of bad things happening to small turtles and tortoises when put on the floor of the house.

Looks like the smaller turtle was dog-chewed at one time in his past.

Here's a good read for you:

http://www.tortoiseforum.org/threads/box-turtle-care-sheet.93937/
 

PJay

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Jul 20, 2016
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Virginia
Hello and welcome to the forum.
 

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