Posted: Sun Dec 13, 2015 8:00 am Re: How to teach her I am not food.
we have a little midland painted, and he does the same thing. We have had tonnes of experience feeding wild turtles by hand,, from RES to Fully grown 24" carapace Female Soft shells. Let me tell you we did get bit. But considering we fed up to 14 different turtles at feeding time the bites were very rare. Once if not less a month and we fed them twice a day. That being said, all were adult turtles when we started to hand feed. I worry that our little guy might think that hands are for snapping at everytime they are in his/her tank. We thought to hopefully maybe avoid this, we now only feed him on his basking spot. So we are training him he can only have his pellet once he crawls up on the basking rock. We do know how smart turtles are so we are hoping that he will learn that he is only gonna get fed when up there and not keep snapping at us any time he sees our hands.. Don't know if it will work, but gonna give it a try. Already I can put my hand in the tank and he will swim on it and sit there.. but he sees my thumb and tries to eat it..lol I don't know how good their eyesight is at this point. But he only gets a treat or a pellet when he crawls up on the rock.. Hopefully he will learn.
Our wild turtles had a spot on the bank of the pond that we fed at.. And that is where they waited for us,, sometimes all day for feeding time. They never snapped at our hands.. Sometimes at bare toes, cause bare toes just looked like wieners..lol To prevent that we wore shoes. but other then that they were pretty awesome. Considering the different types and breeds we had,, clammering over each other to get to the food,, none of them intentionally tried to bite us. We enjoyed this interaction so much, there is no way I am not gonna feed my pet captive turtles by hand. JMO
What kind of turtle do you have? In our experience the RES' were the most aggressive and snappy feeders.. They love their food, but their beaks or mouths whatever they are called aren't very sharp. Unlike the FL Red bellied Sliders. They have very sharp edges to their mouths and a sharp beak. So glad she was a basically calm feeder, only got us a couple times in 4 yrs of feeding, but when she did it hurt..lol
Midland Painted--Philbert--SIP
1-2 1/4" Mississippi Map Turtle(Male)--Atlas
1-2 1/2" Western Painted Turtle (male)--Titan
40 gallon tank