Substrate and feeding question

[jojodesca]

what a horror story...oh Terryo.....what a sad thing...

 

[lisa127]

I was just thinking of something. If your boxies are hatchlings or small babies they most likely won't find the worms anyway. The worms will go under a rock or the water dish..feeding dish...etc. If I keep an adult in for any reason, they will always be digging looking for a worm or something. The really small ones, I'll see getting a pill bug, but rarely see them finding a big worm. Oh...don't put any meal worms in there. I lost two hatchlings years ago from meal worms that turned into big beetles. They ate the hatchlings and left two perfect shells. A real horror.

Oh my, Terry, that is so incredibly sad. No, I wasn't planning on mealworms in there. My boxies are 1.5 years old and 8 months old. 3 1/3 inches SCL and 2 inches SCL. Maybe I'll just keep feeding the way I have been for now. Substrate is such a frustrating issue!

Ok, I need to make a correction. My 1.5 year old gulf coast is now about 3.75 inches long. I just measured. I measured him two weeks ago at just past 3.25 inches. My gulf coast will not slow down in his growing. This is ridiculous. My 8 month old 3 toed is just a hair over 2 inches.

 

[terryo]

Wow...my GC is three years old and she is only 4 in.

 

[Tccarolina]

did you know native american did not eat box turtles? not because they werent abundant, not because they didnt taste good. but because of the wild mushrooms and fungus the boxies would injest. these toxins didnt hurt the turtle but were stored in the fat and meat. so that when a native american would consume a box turtle he would get sick from the toxins and sometimes die? just goes to show that turtles have a high tolerance for (non edible) plants

I don't think this is true, at least not for all tribes. Dodd records in his book, North American Box Turtles (which everyone here should have on thier shelf), that the Sioux and the Kiowa continued to eat them into the 20th century. The ancient Depford on the Florida Gulf Coast ate them. Other old cultures throughout the east coast and the northeast ate them, and thier charred bones are found frequently in trash middens (archaelogical term for kitchen waste pile). The Ohio River Valley and New York state populations were nearly wiped out by the native americans by about 350 years ago. Dodd says the mosaic of cultures in pre-European times led to a wide variety of use, some strictly ceremonial, and some simply for food, and some both.
The Hurons of the Great Lake region, however, avoided box turtles, associating them with bewitchment.

Aside from that, though you are absolutely right. Thier flesh purportedly becomes toxic from consumption of mushrooms, although it is temporary. Dodd writes about a coal miner strike in the vicinity of Scranton, Pennsylvania, when many miners roamed the hills and ate box turtles, after which they became sick. It was decided at the time that this was due to the turtles consumption of toxic toadstools.

I recall from elsewhere reading about some boys who got sick from trying to eat box turtles.

Steve

 

[turtlemann2]

Wow! You sure know your stuff! ill have to see if i can find a source or tribe for my post hmmmm.

I dont actually have the book NA BT's by Dodd but its in my Amazon cart!
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0806135018/?tag=exoticpetnetw-20

Thanks for the post it is actually quite interesting to me

 

[Saloli]

That is a good book I have had a copy for years. My ancestors ( Tsalagi and Mexica) didn't eat them as far as I know but I know they were sometimes used for ceremonies. The Maya I know in one city built a pyramid with them on it. And there are some of the old stories about box turtles ( daksi or tuksi or tooksi).