General Care Discussion :: moving with a hatchling RES

[starryxxnight]

at the end of the month my boyfriend and i will be moving from arizona to missouri, and will be bringing our RES hatchling with us. she's hardly 2 inches. we have read the section on how to transport, but were just wondering if there was anything different we needed to do for our hatchling.

[camee1991]

I would just make sure it had warmth (no drafts), water a few times a day and food once daily. Maybe place it in a rubbermaid container with some holes in the lid for air and a towel in it to burrow.

Then bring an xtra container and fresh bottled water for her to be transferred into in a few times daily for drinks and then for food. Rinse and Repeat! Should be golden...lol

Just make sure she doesnt overheat...as long as the vehicle is cool, but she is not in the draft area and she is contained; all should go well.

Good Luck!!

[steve]

How long is the trip going to take? I'd do a search for Spookster's first hand experience transporting his adult turtle.

[starryxxnight]

the trip will take two days and we'll be staying at a hotel the night in between so we'll be able to put her in water then but i was wondering if she needed to be in water a little more often since she's just a hatchling?

[marisa]

If it was summer and really hot, I'd say stop and periodically hydrate along the way. But moving into fall, I think she'll be OK. You could place her on a damp cloth to increase the humidity if the air is really dry.

[megcornell]

I moved my hatchling from NY to Colorado. I put her in a small plastic "reptile crate" on a damp towel with a dry one over it for her to burrow into. At night I put a few gallons of water in a 10gallon tank, set up her basking perch and a heat bulb and fed her and let her bask a few hours (usually from dinner time to midnight or whenever I went to bed). That seemed to work fine for her. I didn't bother with UVB of filters since she was in the tank for such a short time. I just wanted to give her somewhat of a schedule for the 2.5days.
One important thing is to take her inside when you stop places for longer than a few minutes, cars heat up quickly and it can be too much for a turtle.