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Osiris is not thrilled to be weighed on a food-scale.

Get Your Turtle to Eat

It can make you apprehensive here at the Ornate Bird Garden when your pet turtle refuses to eat.  Being reptiles, turtles require certain conditions to whet their appetites.  On the other hand, they don't need to eat as much food or as often as we mammals and birds who convert food into daily energy.  You can provide them with treats every other day rather than every day.

It helps to get a baseline weight for comparison.  Turn your turtle upside-down on a food scale (so he won't make a break for freedom), and weigh him in grams.  Then you can see how his weight fluctuates through the season, and establish what is normal for him.  (Remember to sterilize that food-scale afterwards if you want to use it for food preparation.  See Practice Turtle Hygiene to Prevent Salmonella Infection.)  Read on for tips on stimulating your turtle's appetite.

Eating Considerations for Cold-Blooded Critters:  Since your turtle is a reptile, and reptiles are cold-blooded, she will have a different approach to eating than we mammals do.  Warm-blooded critters like mammals and birds can self-regulate their body temperatures:  sweating to cool down, shivering to warm up, and converting food into energy. 

Reptiles can't regulate their own body temperatures.  They must take on the warmth or coldness of their surroundings.  Cold temperatures make them sluggish.  They don't have the energy to hunt, eat, or digest their food.  Your turtle needs to warm up before eating, especially in the morning after slumbering through the cool night. 

Potscrubber loves bananas!

Turtles are Omnivores:  In the wild, box turtles eat whatever they can get:  plant matter, poisonous mushrooms, bugs, and even road-kill.  Babies and young turtles need more protein and prefer a carnivorous diet, and then include more and more plant matter as they get older. ^[1]

Reasons Your Turtle Won't Eat:

• He just doesn't feel like it.  Turtles sometimes fast for a couple of weeks with no bad effects. ^[2]
• He's too cold.  Let him warm up in a sunny area in his habitat (or under the heat lamp in a temporary terrarium) for a couple of hours before offering food.
• He's been kept indoors way too long and has retreated into an unhappy, comatose state.  Get him outside immediately.
• He doesn't feel like it because you're over-wintering him inside (preventing him from hibernating because he's ill or underweight).  Make sure he's warm enough under his heat lamp.  Try giving him an afternoon in the sun in an escape-proof enclosure if outdoor temperatures permit (you want 70 F / 21 C).
• His environment is stressful (too much forced interaction between him and kids or dogs).  Take steps to protect and shelter him.
• He is about to hibernate or has just come out of hibernation.  See Post-Hibernation Turtle Care.

• Strawberries & bananas smell delicious.

  He needs more humidity in his environment.  Mist his temporary terrarium.  Hose down his outdoor habitat.  Provide him with a pile of moist grass-clippings and potting soil to lurk within.
• You've been offering him too much of the same thing.  Vary his diet.  Wild turtles are used to pigging out on certain plants and bugs that become plentiful through the season, and then switching to other things as their previous food sources dwindle ^[3].  So don't be surprised if your turtle, who has been glutting himself on strawberries, suddenly can't be bothered with them. 
• You're not offering food that's appealing enough.  Western ornate box turtles can be very picky about this.  You need to engage your turtle's senses as explained below. 

The exciting movements of live prey stimulate appetite.

Tempt Him through His Senses!  Turtles see in full color.  I've observed that, oddly enough, their vision is keen at a distance, but not close-up.  My turtles recognize me across the yard and come out for food.  But when I offer them a night-crawler, they fumble around for it and sometime try to grab my finger!  The worm's movements help draw their attention.  .

You want to offer food that is a bright, attractive color (red is great:  strawberries, raspberries, tomatoes) or that wiggles around in an exciting way like a worm, a grub, a beetle, or a snail.  You can hunt the bugs for them by hand from your garden, but make sure you don't use any pesticides!

Turtles also have a keen sense of smell.  You want to offer food that smells irresistible:  moist, chunky dog-food!  Tiny balls of raw hamburger!  Fresh strawberries with their intoxicating scent can bring the most reluctant turtle rustling forth from his leafy hiding place!  Turtles can even smell water over long distances, and wild turtles will pop up after rainstorms to sit in mud puddles and soak.

Landscape with Edible Plants:  See Create an Outdoor Habitat for Your Box Turtle.  Turtles have been known to eat poisonous mushrooms, and not die.  However, your best bet is to landscape their outdoor habitats with plants you would want to eat.  They will nibble on small amounts of mint, clover, and cooking herbs like oregano or sage or chamomile.  They are not like rabbits that will eat your plants to the ground.

What I Feed My Turtles:

• Osiris pigging out on bananas & dogfood!

  Dog-food (I'm trying to wean them to lowfat, but they vastly prefer Alpo and its meaty gravy!)
• Nightcrawlers from the bait shop
• Snails from the garden (no pesticides!)
• Fruit:  Strawberries and bananas are their favorites.  Daisy will also eat tomato, cantaloupe, and fresh and dried apricots
• Thawed mixed-vegetables in a bag from the supermarket (corn, carrots, green beans)
• Romaine lettuce and field greens, but not iceberg lettuce which has no nutritional value.  Raw broccoli, celery, and carrots.

Their favorite foods are nightcrawlers, snails, strawberries, and bananas.

The Two Very Best Foods to Tempt a Reluctant Eater:  First and foremost, offer some wiggling live prey:  worms or snails. 

Go for the liveliest species of worm:  the Red Wiggler.  I remember offering some to Horus.  A red wiggler fell out of my hand and into her food dish.  It contorted itself so violently that it bounced straight out of the dish, and she actually caught it out of mid-air in her mouth!  I couldn't believe my eyes.

Second, offer some delicious fresh-cut strawberries.  Your turtle will not be able to resist the mouth-watering smell.

Links:

• TURTLES Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
• TURTLES Males and Females - How to Tell Them Apart
• TURTLES Nutrition - Get Your Turtle to Eat
• TURTLES Outdoor Habitat, How to Build
• TURTLES Sex - Mating and Other Sexual Situations
• TURTLES Article Index

References:

[1] The Box Turtle Manual by Philippe de Vosjoli, The Herpetocultural Library Series 300, published by Advanced Vivarium Systems Inc., 1995, p.25  Available on Amazon through this link:

The Box Turtle Manual (Advanced Vivarium Systems)

[2] ibid p.28

[3] ibid.