Releasing Turtles and Finding Rehabbers

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Module Goals

  • Know how to find appropriate rehabbers
  • Be able to provide pertinent information to rehabbers
  • Describe the guidelines for releasing turtles

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Introduction

After completing a turtle’s critical care treatments, you may find that they are healthy enough to no longer require veterinary care, but they may need more time to fully heal from their injuries. Typical instances of this include shell fractures or amputations. This means that the turtle is ready to go out to rehab with an appropriate foster. Before you start sending turtles away to be taken care of, it is important to have a baseline understanding of your foster’s comfort level when caring for the turtles. At TRT, we like to organize our rehabbers based on experience with reptiles, from new to expert. Some may want to rehab turtles who require no more care than basic husbandry. Others may be comfortable monitoring healing wounds or providing minimal treatments (i.e., eye drops). It is important to consider their comfort level, so the turtle you send to them is going to get the best care possible.

How to find rehabbers

As turtles take such a long time to heal from injuries and illnesses, it is important to develop a good network of attentive rehabbers they can go to for continued care. These individuals can be licensed wildlife rehabilitators or simply people interested in donating their time and resources to the care of wildlife, who have been properly informed of appropriate care and husbandry. It is always important that you establish the expectation that they will relinquish the turtle when it is ready for release. 

Resources to find licensed wildlife rehabilitators: 

Turtle rehabilitators do not need a license in North Carolina if they have less than 4 turtles or are not caring for a protected species. This means that your friends, family, or technicians can rehab turtles!

Information to provide to rehabbers

The information below is what TRT provides to their turtle fosters using a handout linked in the Additional Resources.

  • Size:
    • What we use in the turtle lab represents a minimum size requirement- approximately 1 ft by 2 ft for box turtles, and 2 ft by 3 ft for water turtles depending on species.
    • Larger enclosures are always better for foster care: 20 gallon aquaria are typically the smallest that box turtles should be kept in long term. We recommend providing a hide box for them to reduce stress.
    • Water turtles should have an enclosure big enough that their shell is less than 25% of the total surface area. Some fosters have outdoor enclosures for large water turtles in the spring and summer- these must be protected from predators and have partial shade to avoid the turtle overheating.
    • All enclosures need adequate height to prevent escape – turtles are good climbers.
  • Temperature:
    • Ambient temperature of most homes (>70 degrees) is fine. Enclosure temperatures should never drop below 60 degrees. Water should be room temperature for box turtles and for water turtles should range from 70-80 degrees.
  • UV lamp: Recommended but optional – which is why providing sunlight is so important (see “weekly care” below)!
  • Substrate:
    • Box turtles – We use newspapers as a substrate in the lab as it is easy to clean and allows us to monitor the turtle’s injuries. You can also use wood chips mixed with moss, mulch, sand or soil (NO added fertilizer). This should be cleaned when dirty or once weekly.
    • Water turtles – Tap water deep enough for the turtle to submerge itself PLUS A PLATFORM that allows escape from the water and bask (despite living in water, these turtles can drown!) This should be cleaned out 2-3 times a week or when dirty and have food removed 12 hours after it is offered.
  • Water dish: for box turtles to drink from and crawl in/out of. This should be cleaned daily- a lot of them prefer to defecate in their water dish.
  • Soaking dish: a small bin separate from a box turtles main enclosure for their daily soaking.

  • Box turtles:
    • Protein (50%) – worms, shrimp, slugs, box turtle chow (from pet store)
    • Vegetation (50%) – carrots, squash, strawberries, raspberries, grapes, blueberries, romaine, green leaf lettuce, arugula, mushrooms, bananas
    • Example meal = 1 worm, 1 small lettuce leaf and 1 strawberry cut up into pieces smaller than the turtle’s head
  • Water turtles:
    • Protein (80%) – fish, shrimp, worms, mice
    • Vegetation (20%) – tomatoes, strawberries, raspberries, grapes, blueberries, romaine, green leaf lettuce, arugula, squash, mushrooms, carrots, melons, bananas
    • Example meal = 2 pieces of fish approximately the size of the turtle’s head
  • Turtles can go weeks without eating. While this is not ideal, do not be alarmed if an injured turtle does not have a great appetite.
  • Can entice with: soaked dog food, boiled eggs, meat baby food, pinkie mice, crickets, alfalfa hay pellets
  • Tricks to stimulate appetite:
    • Adding in a source of UV light or increasing sunlight exposure
    • Feeding in the early morning or late afternoon when box turtles are most active in the wild
    • Offering live, moving food such as earthworms
    • Spraying their enclosure to create a humid environment as rainstorms often increase turtle activity
DAILY CHECKLIST: WEEKLY CHECKLIST:
  • Feed.
  •  Clean/ change water.
    • water dish for box turtles
    •  any soiled aspects of enclosures
  • For 20 minutes per day:
    • box turtle – soak in chin deep water
    • water turtle – remove from water
  • Take turtle outside to absorb UV rays, which helps with wound healing and appetite stimulation. Aim for 1-2 hours per week minimum. 
    • Do not leave unattended – they will escape.
  •  Make sure not to overheat/ overchill outdoors.
    • do not leave in an enclosed container, as this will trap heat like a hot car
  •  Clean enclosure with dish soap and rinse well.

Rechecks

Your foster will need to bring the turtle in for a recheck roughly once a month depending on their injury. At this point, you will determine if the turtle needs to return for continued care with the foster or if it can be released.

General Things to Keep in Mind

  • Try to arrange rechecks with your turtles every 4-6 weeks to see how they are progressing. 
    • Make sure to provide the rehabbers with the best way to contact you in case they have questions or need help with their turtle.
      • Email or text message based off of your preference
    • Clarify with your rehabbers that communication is critical in making sure the turtles are okay and healing appropriately.
      • If your rehabbers are not great at communicating, you may miss something being wrong with your turtle, and they may need to stay in rehab longer than expected.
  • If your rehabber has other reptiles in their house, they CANNOT take any viral turtles.
    • Check turtles for nasal discharge and oral plaques 
  • Remember to educate them if they have kids in their house.
    • Hand washing is critical after handling.
    • Turtles can bite, just like any animal. 
  • If they have pets in their house, they need to remember that the turtles need to be protected from them. 

Releasing a Turtle

When to release

At least 4 weeks after the last day of systemic antibiotic treatment and pain medication. This is the minimum washout period to limit antibiotic introduction to the environment.

  • No nasal bubbles, ocular discharge, increased respiratory effort or plaques in the oral cavity for at least 1 week
  • 1 week after discontinuation of ophthalmic antibiotic/antiinflammatory solutions or ointments. Monitor for recurrence of signs.

  • After suture removal
  • Assess sutures in 6 weeks, remove if incision is healed fully

  • Assess stability of shell repair at 4 months
  • This can take up to a year depending on husbandry and overall health of turtle
  • Remove all hooks and wires and glue from shell if stability has been achieved
  • For missing pieces of shell, monitor for re-calcification. This can take several years to fully calcify.
  • Large defects should be fully calcified at time of release
  • Turtles with small defects can be released when appropriate level of durability is reached  (leathery consistency)

After incision has fully healed, without recurrence of abscess

 

Ideally, all turtles should be eating on their own and have a sufficient activity level. Some turtles are stressed in captivity and will not eat.

How to release

Once a turtle is healthy enough to be released, we need to consider some requirements before setting them free. Because turtles have a homing instinct, we need to be very specific when releasing them. For box turtles, they must be released within a 1 mile radius of where they were found. For water turtles, they must be released within a 5 mile radius of where they were found. 

We try to only release turtles when it is warm out. Generally, this means from the end of April until mid October. We try to only release turtles on a week where the temperature is going to be above 60 degrees all week. If you have a turtle presenting between October and April, you may need to consider “over-wintering” them with a rehabber. If you end up doing this, it is important to remember that some turtles may not eat while being rehabbed during the winter, because they are used to brumating. If this happens, you can suggest to the rehabber for them to try introducing new foods to try to entice the turtle. If the turtle is anorexic for a month, tube feeding them may be necessary to make sure they are getting enough nutrition to continue to heal.

A box turtle being released after healing from its injuries.

Additional Resources

Key Concepts

  • Having a network of rehabbers will be an important part of your success in treating wild turtles
  • Rehabbers vary in experience and in comfort level regarding what kinds of patients they can take on
  • Be sure to provide rehabbers with adequate husbandry information
  • Recheck turtles every 4-6 weeks and release them near where they were found

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