How to Keep Turtles Safely Through the Winter

Many people know that turtles enter hibernation in winter, but most people are still not very clear about how to handle a turtle's hibernation and how to keep a turtle in winter. Below is a brief introduction to how to keep turtles in winter?

In the wild, aquatic turtles usually dive into the silt at the bottom of the water or hide under stones or fallen leaves along the shore to hibernate.

For pet aquatic turtles, there are several hibernation options to choose from:

1. Bury them in moist sand, taking care to ensure the sand has relatively high moisture.

2. Cover their bodies with moist gauze.

3. Place them in shallow water (for semi-aquatic turtles such as the yellow-margined box turtle, this method is not recommended).

4. Place them in a wooden box and cover them with moist straw on top (experience of Shunzi, a turtle keeper in Wuhan).

Hibernating aquatic turtles should also be checked periodically. Do not let weak or sick turtles hibernate; they do not have enough fat to consume during hibernation.

Stop feeding them one week before hibernation and soak them in warm water, otherwise the accumulation of food and feces in the body during hibernation can easily cause gastroenteritis. Be sure to maintain relatively high moisture, otherwise they will die of dehydration (both my husband and I had this painful experience as children).

During hibernation, the ambient temperature must not drop below 5°C, otherwise they will die from excessive cold. You can also use a heating method to keep them and prevent them from hibernating, but their feeding frequency and food intake in winter will decrease to some extent.

However, for certain box turtle species, the absence of the hibernation process may be fatal; they must hibernate.

What should you pay attention to when keeping turtles in winter?

1. The methods for keeping turtles are neither hard nor simple to describe. Their habits are like those of many animals in nature: they need to hibernate. So when winter comes, they will stop eating and drinking. And before winter, turtles need to eat a large amount of food. If a turtle does not eat enough food, then it may starve to death when winter comes.

2. However, in winter, the turtle does not eat or drink and just sleeps all the time, and we do not know whether it is alive. What should be done? To judge whether a turtle is alive in winter, you need to raise the water temperature. You can soak the small turtle in water at about 30 degrees, and then see whether the turtle moves. If it does not move, it may be dead.

3. When the turtle is about to hibernate, you also need to give it a very warm and comfortable “bed” so that the turtle can hibernate well. The “bed” that lets the turtle hibernate well must be a container filled with a certain amount of river sand. Then put some paper balls on top. It is best to cover the entire layer of sand with the paper balls, then place the turtle on top, and it will burrow into the sand by itself and sleep deeply.

Actually, when keeping turtles in winter, we only need to pay attention to observing whether they are still alive, and that is basically enough. Nothing else needs much attention.