Hi. I have read through these forums quite a bit, to the point where I’ve read some (if not many) of the same things over and over again. I know that many of us here have, and further, I know that we all would be likely to already be aware of the fact that we are supposed to feed “a turtle’s head” worth of pellets every other day.
But, what does that mean? That question also gets asked from time to time, people read the turtle head thing and ask; “What does ‘turtle head’ really mean?” and that question is usually answered by repeating the turtle head thing again in greater detail… something like: “A turtle head is the size of your turtles head (imagine it was hollow) not including the neck” – no offense to anyone who would, or has, answered such a question in such a manner, but that response really just clears up the definition of the word “head”.
While correctly understanding the definition of the word “head” would clearly be an important part of following the “turtle head rule of thumb”, It seems to me that actually estimating what volume of turtle pellets would occupy that differently shaped,imaginary bit of space is another skill set entirely.
I would like to suggest a discussion about how much we feed our turtles as measured in volumes described by actual units of measure. I know that this will vary depending on the size of your turtle (or possibly just by the size of your turtle’s head) so I think posting your turtle’s size along with how much you feed would be necessary. I suppose if you have a smaller turtle that gets a larger feeding due to a disproportionately large head, that would be relevant to the discussion as well. As long as your turtles have normally proportioned heads, I don’t think posting the turtles actual head circumference or hat size will be necessary, we’ll just assume it’s head is normally proportioned unless otherwise stated.
I do also ask that you refrain from estimating your measurements just so that you may participate in this discussion thread. I completely understand that once I post this, everybody is going to be very excited and eager to reply to my post and to be a part of this epic discussion, however, I feel that for the purpose of attaining maximum accuracy we must insist that forum members actually measure the amount of pellets being fed, using appropriate units of measure, in an attempt to minimize our margin for error.
I’ll start:
5.5” turtle – one slightly rounded table spoon of pellets
6.5” turtle – one slightly heaped table spoon of pellets.
Okay – your turn.
I look forward to reading your many responses, and hopefully being able to use this data to calculate an average “turtle head” sized feeding for various sizes of turtle.
Thanks for reading and, get out your measuring spoons!
