If you visit TurtleTails.com often, you know that this web site was created to share pictures of turtles and other reptiles and amphibians with you for the enjoyment of it. Many enjoyable hours are spent doing just that.

    While showing our turtles and how we house them to fellow herpers (something we also enjoy doing), they were pleased to learn some of our techniques for raising baby turtles. We realized that you may enjoy going behind-the-scenes as well so we created these tours.

    Beginning with the introduction of our first three tours, the popularity of "Raising Baby Turtles" has been more than was anticipated and indicates to us that more content of this nature will be appreciated. Please keep in mind that these tours are not care sheets or advise. There are plenty of web sites that provide care sheets and tell you what to do and think. The tours are simply the sharing of ideas and techniques we use. None of these techniques are necessary to keep turtles successfully.

    In order for you to better understand the techniques presented here, please know that any turtles featured on these pages that are kept in captivity by us are kept as pets. They are cherished. Each one is named and relates to us in its own way. They are not kept as specimens and are never sold to others. We want them to be healthy, happy, and with us for a very long time.

    With this in mind, we can express our goals for housing turtles as follows:

        1.    Provide healthy and safe environments,
        2.    Provide interesting and enjoyable environments,
        3.    Minimize daily maintenance,
        4.    Have fun!

    So lets go behind the scenes and see some of these techniques:

Tour 1: Baby Land Turtles Setting up an open vivarium for box turtles and other terrestrial turtles. Revised 7/29/2007

Tour 2: Baby Water Turtles Setting up an aquarium for small water turtles. Revised 7/29/2007

Tour 3: Give My Poor Turtle a Bone Yes! We give our turtles bones. Revised 7/29/2007

Tour 4: Rub-a-Dub Dub Three turtles in a tub for their weekly soak. Revised 7/29/2007

Tour 5: An Interesting and Enjoyable Environment And fun to create. Revised 8/10/2007

Tour 6: In the Leaf Litter An ever changing environment. Revised 8/16/2007

Tour 7: A Better Island Planter Just one of many variations of a theme. Revised 8/19/2007

Tour 8: Caring for Turtle Eggs Answers to many many emails on how we incubate turtle eggs. Revised 9/8/2004

Tour 9: Summer Box for Juvenile Box Turtles Outdoors Time to move young box turtles outside. Revised 5/27/2007

Tour 10: Feeding Baby Turtles More on feeding baby turtles. Revised 8/25/2007

Tour 11: Hibernation of Pet Turtles What we do with our turtles during Pennsylvania winters. Revised 10/31/2007

Tour 12: Many Uses for Concrete Projects for aquariums, outdoors habitats, and around the yard. Revised 5/15/2004

Tour 13: Using Brass and Copper Projects for aquariums and vivariums. Revised 10/3/2007

Tour 14: Help! I Found a Turtle Our thoughts and advise as often conveyed in emails. Revised 3/18/2005

Tour 15: Do Turtle Shells Peel? An answer to another common email we receive. Revised 8/6/2007

Tour 16: Handling Pet Turtles How and how often we handle our pet turtles. Revised 8/4/2007

Tour 17: Hide Boxes for Turtles How we make hide boxes for our pet turtles. Revised 7/18/2007

Tour 18: Starting Hatchling Water Turtles How we start raising hatchling water turtles. Revised 7/24/2007

Tour 19: A Floating Island Planter That's right! A floating island for turtles that is filled with plants. Revised 7/25/2007

Tour 20: Breeding Pet Turtles No we do not breed turtles. They do it all by themselves. Revised and completed 7/1/2007

Tour 21: A Muddy Pool for a Pet Snapping Turtle It doesn't get much better for a pet snapping turtle. Revised 7/18/2007

Tour 22: How Much Space for Pet Turtles Think of yourself as your turtle's space rather than the container that houses it most of the time. New 7/22/2007

Tour 23: A Temporary Turtle Pen Not all pet turtles have permenent outdoors enclosures to use. New 9/1/2007

 
We hope you enjoyed the tours. Come back again; more tours are planned.