General Care Discussion :: Help!!!

[SpotsMama]

I love Matilda! It's an old fashioned name, and she's a fine old girl.

On the diet. here's a link to the nuitrition section of site which is a gold mine of good tips. The benefit of good quality pellets is that they are balanced whereas it's hard to provide everything she'll need with a diet you make up yourself.

http://www.redearslider.com/index_nutrition.html

Instead of the hamburger, think about fish, shrimp, things like that. A little cooked chicken is good. The hamburger tends to be quite fatty. Also the gold fish are fatty. Most people on here that live feed use guppies and minnows, which are not so fatty.

[grey goose]

I love that pic of Spot with his big foot sticking out!

[SpotsMama]

Spot's back feet are awesome. He has to fold them up to tuck them into his shell. When he's in the right mood he likes me to rub them.

[DavidY]

A lot of us like to feed our turtles pieces of cuttle bone like you usually give to birds as a calcium supplement. Once the turtle gets a bite of it, they quickly realize what it is and will eat what they need. Some people clip it to the side of their tank with a veggie clip. I just like to break off pieces and feed it by hand a couple of times a week.

Also, RES can only eat under water as they do not have salivary glands to aid in their swallowing food. I also though there was something about them not having tongues too that prevented them from swallowing on land, but that might be another reptile that I'm thinking of. Anyway, they might grab food from their basking platform but they will always drag it under water to eat it. I've fed dusted crickets that way before and usually the turtle is able to eat most of it before the dust gets washed away.

I think the pellet foods are better for them than live foods. Especially the high quality pellets like the Reptomin food sticks or Mazuri turtle food. There are others too but those two are the better ones from what I understand. Live foods can introduce parasites or other diseases. It's also hard to provide the variety of live foods that a wild turtle would normally get on a daily basis. The pellets are formulated to provide the turtles with the balanced nutrition that they need. Also provide fresh veggies and/or aquatic plants on a daily basis as that makes up a large part of the RES's diet.

[grey goose]

I've been buying those freeze dried crickets. They are a bit pricey but they keep well and my guys only get them during water changes in a separate container.

[SpotsMama]

Mark, thinking about your outdoor enclosure, here's a thread about climbing turtles.

http://www.redearslider.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9367

I remember seeng a video on here of a turtle climbing all the way to the top of a rather high chicken wire fence. There was a barrier at the top of that fence so the turtle didn't get away - instead he just fell all the way to the ground. Ouch!

[Starchick]

Yeah, stay away from raw meat.

Beware of feeding too much protein overall anyway, a once in a while treat of bloodworms, crickets, feeder fish or some tuna is fine, but their diet should be mostly veggies. The feeding section of this forum has a good list of appropriate vegetables posted, try to feed a variety of those, along with a good commercial turtle diet. Mazuri is highly recommended if you can find it, but lots of people (including me!) use Reptomin.

The main page of this site has an overview of feeding that will help you decide how you want to go about feeding, everyone does it a little differently. My boys get either romaine or green leaf lettuce every morning, along with little bits of pepper or carrot, or whatever else we have to give them, then they each get half the amount of pellets that would fit in their heads if hollow. For Napoleon that's 5 pellets, for Hercules it's 7! Some people feed the pellets every other day, but my boys are beggars and I feel bad if they don't get something daily.

I like Matilda! She looks like a Matilda.

[Ferd]

I was looking at your other pictures, in some of them, it looks like Matilda has shell rot on the bottom scutes. It is the red dots. This is usually caused by a wet drying area so the bottom cant fully dry. I am uncertain on how to fix it, but i am sure that someone else here knows how
(srry if this was already posted, i didnt see it)

[N4784N R4613]

RES don't have any saliva glands, so they have to eat in water to swallow there food.

[alexis_906]

You'll never guess what my 6 year old wants to call her???

WE are partial to Matilda any Ideas?

I'd like to know what your 6 year old wants to call her. Because I don't think it could be as far out as what my boyfriends son named our turtle 2 years ago when he was 5. Ready for this...."Cereal Box" and he is not even a box turtle . And our new one is called "Cheerios" again he named it to go with our older turtle. Kids can named them the silliest things. But ours turned out to be great conversation pieces and great memories.

[marisa]

Matilda is a fitting name. I don't see red areas on the plastron, just some more orange-looking areas where it looks like the portion of the scute has shed (or has worn down). What kind of basking area did she have before? Was it abrasive? If her living conditions weren't that good before, it's not surprising that she's shedding unevenly.

[camee1991]

What a big girl! She looks as big as my 4 year old Tobi!

I would recommend you get a good Mercury Vapor Bulb for her. Heat/UVA/UVB all in one. I have a Powersun brand from 4littlepets.com. Its wonderful! Also just about the powder thing for calcium on food source, I got some stuff from Petco called Cut Load Cricket and Insect Food. You feed the crickets this and then in 24 hours you can feed them to your Res. They get the calcium without it washing off.

Looks like you are a life saver! Poor baby girl sure didnt have a great life prior, huh? But Im sure you will take care of that! Props to you and GOOD LUCK!

P.S. My dog is a Matilda too! hehe

[Mark Steeves]

We call her Matilda My son calls her Tuck from Wonder Pets. She is a pretty awesome animal. Her personality is pretty cool , she is a terrible food mooch!! and will eat right out of my hand. We have been trying lots of different fruits and veggies and she readily eats most every thing we feed her she is still in her too small tank but I have made it so that she has a space to go to on the top of the tank with a basking light so she can get dry and it frees some space in the tank for her. She is more active since she came here and her shedding is almost over.
I have built her an awesome pond that is completely surrounded by wood and chicken wire. I also did the floor and top with wire so she is completely encased. I used blue grass sod and included a large basking stone. The pond is of the large insert type and has a filter and fountain. I am getting a large rubbermaid to feed her in the winter or better yet I'm searching for a larger tank within my budget. The total cost of the pond was roughly 150.00 (I'm a good scrounger upper!)
I am looking for info on her outside requirements Does she need a house with heat? what about heat rock on cooler days I'm awaiting to find out if I'll need a heater for the pond chances are I will as the weather has been crappy hear lately. Thanks for all the help I'll post pictures when I get it all set up!! Mark

[DavidY]

Wow, sounds like an awesome pond, Mark! I can't wait to see some pics. Take a look at these links from this website for more info on housing a RES outdoors...

http://www.redearslider.com/outdoor_overview.html
http://www.redearslider.com/outdoor_considerations.html

I'm hoping to get a nice outdoor pond/garden setup built too. Hopefully I can begin this fall and have it ready by next summer.

[industrial_girl_2000]

Oh yeh she is in full shed and seems pretty healthy and very strong. she even scoots accross the floor at a pretty quick pace!!!
She is feeding well and likes bananas and kiwi,. dew worms and gold fish.
She is a very messy eater and regurgitates her food and re-eats it. I have Turtle food pellets and sticks but am holding off as I learn what she needs. I'd rather feed her as natural as possible. I am aware of the need for calcium and Vit.D and have all the vits she will need as my other lizards require them. It's just that She has thus far only eaten in the water and I dont know how I'm going to get powders into her food source without washing it of in the water of the tank.
I'm going to try her on raw hamburger than add the vits. in as I'm sure she is suffering from lack of calcium and a poor diet Her shell has a lot of pits in it like old scars it is very hard but bumpy. their is no shell rot that the vet could find.

That turtle looks great! Glad to hear of someone else who has a big baby like mine! WELCOME to the site!!!

Please read the list on what to feed a turtle in the feeding section of the main area of the www.redearslider.com website. Goldfish are very fatty & lack a lot of nutrients so you can skip those. There are many other protein choices besides goldfish which are more healthy for your big beautiful girl!

It is good that you want to feed her more natural foods. I also have a very large RES (9" long shell, 6" wide, and 3.75" tall, over 4 lbs in weight) who is older than 17 yrs (I have had her for 17 yrs, but she was already big when I got her so I don't know exactly how old she is). My big girl loves greens like romaine, pond plants, and green lettuce. She also loves berries as treats, boiled sweet potato, and cooked squash in addition to many other plant foods. Her pellet of choice for the last 17 yrs has been Reptomin foodsticks & she has been doing great. Don't underestimate the pellets. In the wild, turtles get a very varied diet as well as a lot of exercise. In captivity, we can try to replicate these conditions but we can never get it 100%. That's where the pellets help fill in the cracks because they add a few extra vitamins that are hard to get sometimes (like vitamin E, which aids in shedding).

In regards to the calcium, the greens will help in that regard, & some folks on here like to feed cuttlebone. My girl hates cuttlebone (won't touch it!) so I sometimes have to grind it up & sneak it into some of her food treats (mix it with mushy sweet potato & feed her with baby spoon, for example). Another thing I have done is to stuff the open end of a raspberry with the ground-up cuttle. This works well too.

Enjoy!