Urgent Care :: 1 lonley turtle now has 4 friends!! BUT NOT HAPPY ABOUT IT!

[CPUSTEVE]

Hey there I would love anyones help on this one. I has a turtle and he had been with other turtles before but they got sick and died cause they ate a rabbit that fell into a pond long story. Anyways I bought 4 more trutles and they are all bigger then he is but he appears to be attacking all of them. They move away or whatever from him. Its not all the time but enough to get my attention. the turtle appears to be picking on the rest and almost bitting them anywhere he can. Any Ideas as to what I can do to get this turtle to cut it out because it is a serious situation. Any help would be great

thanks everyone


STEVE

[cam722]

Sounds like territorial behavior to me. This is one of the things that has been discussed many times on here about getting multiple turtles. You may have to separate the turtle from the others, one of the "hazards" of owning multiple turtles. What size pond do you have them in? What size/sex are the turtles?

[ZMLC]

Some turtles are very territorial...My female RES for example...She was used to being by herself...and when I introduced another smaller RES...She kept trying to bite him...Eventually we had to separate them...A pet store worker specializing in turtles told me it was something that was going to happen for a while since turtles are at times behave that way when introduced to new turtles...I took it upon myself to put them together for 20 minutes a day, and gradually increased the time...Eventually they were ok with it and now they can't get enough of each other.

I know it's hard to see them fight since you don't want any of them to get hurt...I even gave one of my turtle a small lecture on her new buddy...I was that desperate but I like to think she listened.

I hope I helped a little.

Dennise

[sonyj]

That's great that it worked out for you and your turtles, ZMLC.

We should just remember though that we shouldn't ever put two or more turtles together that are very different in size. There's been some very, very sad posts on here about older/larger turtles killing and eating the smaller/younger turtles.

If they are similar in size/age, then introducing them slowly to each other is great after the quarantine period is up.

[ZMLC]

Yes that's very true...that's why I had to monitor them throughout this process. Luckily it worked out for them.

~Dennise