what can i feed my painted turtle?

Answer 1

I have raised painted turtles for a long time. You can buy food in the pet store for them. Its basically a floating food stick designed for aquatic turtles. There are a few varieties out there. My little guys love these things and can't seem to get enough of them. Just make sure you don't overfeed them, they can get pudgy.

You can also feed them earthworms if you like. These can be raised in a worm box of dirt and fed coffee grounds. Its a bit more work and I eventually gave up on it, the turtles preferred the food sticks.

As a special treat, you can give them turkey on occasion. It must not be the processed type and it must be white meat. Anything else has too high of a fat content for them to process. I usually give them a little bit of white meat from turkey on thanksgiving. They love it and its good for them. This is the only meat you can really give them. Anything else has too high of a fat content for them to handle and will kill them. There are old books that say hamburger meat is acceptable food. Never give them this. Since they eat mostly bugs, worms, and fish in the wild their little bodies just can't process fatty meats well enough and any sort of red meat is very bad for them.

I have raised multiple turtles this way to the average life expectancy every time. Hope this helps.

Answer 2

The foundation of the diet should be a high-quality pelleted turtle food. Cheap foods use less nutritious ingredients and fillers, so go with the more expensive stuff.

Once that is established, you can supplement the diet with live or frozen/thawed 'fish foods' like small fish, worms, insects, shrimp, etc.- basically stuff you'd feed to many kinds of tropical fish.

While the turtle is small, keep the stuff small as well- turtles hunt partially by size. A typical serving is about 1 to 2 times the size of the turtle's head, Babies are fed daily, young are fed every other day, and adults are fed every three days or so (and get more vegetation added to the diet, usually as lightly boiled dark green leafy stuff).

Even though it focuses on Red-ears, this site is helpful for many pond turtles:

Answer 3

For turtles, their diet is a very important aspect of the turtle's life. As for all animals, finding food is a part of survival. Painted turtles have a very varied diet. When they are young, they are mostly carnivorous. At this age they eat mostly maggots, larvae, and beetles. As they mature, they become omnivorous, eating snails, insects, crayfish, leeches, tadpoles, small fish, and many types of plants. Unfortunately for the turtle, people enjoy eating them in soups and stews.

When a turtle eats, it does not chew its food. Instead they use their beaks to slice the food and the strong throat muscles to gulp down the food.

Calcium intake is important to keep their shell in good condition.

Go backyard hunting and collect small lizards, crikets, or go to your local pet store and see if they have some.

Answer 4

You can try the pet store for turtle food. We used to feed ours ground up burger (raw) when we were young. Some pet stores may sell you live bugs for your turtle also. Ask your area pet store owner.

Answer 5

they scavenge almost anything. try chopped fish, not canned. like catfish or talapia, it's cheap at the grocery store. then also earthworms, crickets, or store bought turtle food. try some plants like duck weed, check with local petstore for other suggestions.

Answer 6

You would think that is something you would inquire about before keeping a turtle captive.

Answer 7

turtle food and if it doesn t eat try small gold fish

Answer 8

Chicken fry

Answer 9

i feed mine feeder goldfish they love them

Answer 10

HAGU