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Eastern Box Turtle: native foods diet? - Printable Version

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Eastern Box Turtle: native foods diet? - ArmyOfDreams - 06-30-2014

Long story short, I'm caring for a wild-born box turtle with MBD (the situation is legal, I promise). She's about 17 years old and is healthy minus the MBD. Current cage setup is leaf litter, water pan, proper lighting etc.
Looking to compose a healthy diet for her with foods she would find herself/foods I can find in my back yard. Unfortunately most pet care sites have very little information on things like broadleaf plantain's calcium content or the number of pill bugs to feed a box turtle per week Sad Anyone have any ideas?

RE: Eastern Box Turtle: native foods diet? - BobCat - 04-03-2015

(06-30-2014, 11:54 AM)ArmyOfDreams Wrote: Long story short, I'm caring for a wild-born box turtle with MBD (the situation is legal, I promise). She's about 17 years old and is healthy minus the MBD. Current cage setup is leaf litter, water pan, proper lighting etc.
Looking to compose a healthy diet for her with foods she would find herself/foods I can find in my back yard. Unfortunately most pet care sites have very little information on things like broadleaf plantain's calcium content or the number of pill bugs to feed a box turtle per week Sad Anyone have any ideas?

Oh, I hope you have found your answers about food that is best for your box turtle that you are care caring for with MBD. I wondered what you meant and quickly found out that MBD stands for metabolic bone disease. I posted a picture of this condition for others to see, too. It looks so debilitating for the turtle to not be able to be able to close their shell, if this condition worsens. You are right that it all stems down to finding the best foods for the diet of this turtle to help this condition. It appears from my brief Google search, the key is the right balance between vitamins and mineral, along with getting enough sunlight.

[Image: turtk.jpg]

RE: Eastern Box Turtle: native foods diet? - Happyflowerlady - 04-09-2015

The only kind of turtle that I have ever had was the painted turtle. When I was a little kid, they used to sell them in dime stores, and they only cost about a dollar, maybe less. I think the store made their money by selling us all of the turtle food, the terrarium to keep the turtle in, and any other accessories we needed.
These little turtles were only and inch or two across, so they must have been very young babies, and the back of the shell was always painted with some sort of picture. So, they were actually "painted" painted turtles. They never seemed to live very long; so maybe the turtle food that they sold in the store was not very healthy for the turtle after all.
Painted turtles were native where I lived, and in the spring, we would often see them crawling across the road to find the spot where they wanted to lay their eggs.
Sometimes we would stop and catch one and let the kids keep it for a day or so, and then we put it back again so it could live in the wild like it was supposed to do.