To keep a box turtle healthy it is important to provide it with suitable box turtle food.
Box turtle food chart.
The information on this site is not veterinary advice and we are not veterinarians.
Generally hatchlings and juvenile box turtles are more carnivorous than adults which are typically more herbivorous.
Types of foods for box turtles.
Box turtles do best in a turtle safe outdoor pen that mimics their natural environment as long as temperatures don t fall below 50 degrees fahrenheit.
Live or frozen baby or young mice and rats.
Here is the eastern box turtle diet plus western one diet plan that you must follow to keep your box turtle alive and healthy.
Even box turtle experts don t completely agree on how best to care for these animals or how to best meet their needs.
By far the most popular is the true eastern box turtle terrapene carolina carolina so this guide will focus on this variety coming from canada and the us east coast they can live for 30 to 40 years.
Prepared tortoise chows especially mazuri tortoise diet zoo med natural grassland tortoise food or zoo med natural forest tortoise food.
It will help keep them healthy and alive.
But if well cared for they can live up to 100 years.
You can feed them a salad of items mixed in this ratio or offer different foods at each meal so that the overall diet equals roughly these ratios.
Housing the common box turtle.
Fresh dried cubed or pelleted hay.
Box turtles are omnivorous which means that they eat both plant and animal based foods.
Pet or feed store foods.
The pen should have walls that are at least 18 inches tall with an overhang to prevent the turtle from climbing out.
They have a sharp eye and keen sense of smell.
The proportions of animal versus plant based food items will depend on both the age and the species of box turtle that you are feeding.
There are six subspecies of eastern box turtles and they all belong to the emydidae family.
Some box turtles like the ornate box turtle eat insects.
Box turtles are omnivores which means they will eat a variety of both animal and plant based foods.
Freeze dried plants cactus fruits or insects.
Young growing box turtles up to 4 6 years of age tend to be primarily carnivores and adults tend to be herbivorous.
In general the box turtle diet should be about 50 animal matter 40 plant based foods fruits vegetables leaves and 10 fungi mushrooms.
Box turtles are omnivores so their diet must include insects worms snails mushrooms spiders caterpillars green beans berries grass crickets flowers fruit and all other plants or small insects.
In order to do this it is crucial to keep in mind that there are many different species and subspecies of box turtles and that box turtles live in many different types of environments in mexico and the united states.
