General Care Discussion :: Plastron & Food

[Solfeure]

Three questions here:

1. How long does it take for a hatchling to absorb the plastron completely?

2. If a RES is still absorbing the plastron, does it need to eat?

3. If a RES is just a couple of months old, does it sleep a lot?

[steve]

Do you mean the yolk sac?

A turtle should be fairly active when it's not sleeping or basking.

[Solfeure]

Yes, the yolk sac.

But how much does a hatchling sleep every day?

[steve]

If it still has the yolk sac, it might not want to or need to eat right away though offering food is fine. I'm not sure of the total time it would take to absorb it -- is it still visible?

As for sleeping, it should be sleeping at night and be up during day light hours. It might sleep a little when basking, but the hatchling should be active.

[marisa]

1. It depends, but even if the egg sac appears to be absorbed completely, the hatchling is still deriving nourishment from it (and will do so for longer than most people think). BTW, if your turtle still has the egg sac, it's not yet two months old. Does it still have an egg tooth? If it still has even the remnants of an egg sac, don't try for whatever reason to remove it.

2. If the hatchling is still getting nourishment from the egg sac, it will not want to eat (yet). An Eastern painted hatchling I retrieved from the lawn last fall that had a hole where the egg sac had been. It took about a month for it to start to recognize Reptomin Baby and food (and the pellets had to be made even smaller (halved or cut into thirds) for him to try to eat it. It took even longer for the hole to close up.

3. I wouldn't say that a newly-hatched turtle is really "active" but it should be awake and alert for the most part. What's the water temp? Is there a little basking area? If so, what's the basking area temp?

[Solfeure]

I have two hatchling RES. and one of them still has an egg tooth. The yolk sacs for both seem to have disappeared completely when I checked this morning, but the one with the egg tooth still keeps the tooth. The little RESs have just spent 2 and 4 days in their current location, does this affect their eating habit? And if they really are still absorbing their egg sacs, does that mean I can just ignore them for the time being, or still offer them food nonetheless?

The temperature of the water is more or less 27 C, and the outside air is usually somewhere around 30 C. The shells of both are also kind of soft--is this natural?

The shells of both are still roughly 1 inch (it's kind of hard getting a precise measurement--they won't stop thrashing around...)

[marisa]

If the egg sacs have disappeared and the spot has closed up to the point where the plastron looks normal, then, yes, I would start offering them small amounts of food (like Reptomin Baby for starters, also small cut-up pieces of earthworm). They may not recognize it as food at first, but you never know when they'll get hungry enough to try to eat. Just be patient. Do try putting some pieces of leafy greens (red leaf lettuce, for example) or anacharis, an aquatic plant in the tank. They can rest on it, hide under it and nibble on it if they want to.

I'm not sure that you mean by the effect staying in one location on their eating habits.

The shells on hatchings are often a little pliable, especially the marginal scutes above the tail. The shell hardens as they grow, usually at around a year of age.

Are they being kept outside? The water temp sounds a tad cool to me for such small turtles.