Ornate Box Turtle Diet

jtj5002

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Sep 26, 2019
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Louisiana
I have a baby/juvie Ornate box turtle. Shell length is about 2" and she weights 2 oz even. She currently primary eats Nightcrawlers. She will finish eating very large ones and I don't even know how they fit in her tummy. She will poo while eating almost every time.

I'm not sure what the volume of food I should be feeding her. Most people say boxies will know to stop when they are full. I am currently giving 3-5 large nightcrawlers a week, and offer her a veggie mix every day. She has a cuttlebone. I'm currently using a mix of kale, yellow squash, carrots, and Chinese cabbage. She very rarely look at the veggies. Every once a while she will accidentally chew on one while eating worms but will spit it out. I also feed her T-rex box turtle pellets mixed in with the vegges, and she usually spit them out after sniffing and chewing on them a little.

Today was day 3 without worms because I'm trying to get her to eat other things. I left her a pile of veggies with pellets on her flat rock, and experimented a little. When I drop a single pellet near her, she will sniff it and tries to eat it. I watered them a little more than usual to make them softer, and she ate a couple of pellets. I left her a pile of that T-rex pellets next to her pile of veggie mixed with pellets. She ate all the pellets by itself but did not touch any in the veggie mix. There must be something in the veggie mix she doesn't like, possibly the smell of kale. She does seem semi interested in the squash and will at least sniff them and bite a couple times, but usually don't eat them.

The pellets seems to be pretty balanced when it comes to protein, and vitamins that she isn't getting because she won't eat veggies. Nightcrawlers have a pretty good calcium ratio and I have Calcium with and without d3, and multi vitamin supplements just in case.

How should I balance her diet and what volume of food should I be feeding her? Will nightcrawler + pellets only be ok for the short term until I can figure out what veggies she like?

Thank you guys!
 

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