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Posted by nathana on April 17, 2003 at 08:54:29:
In Reply to: Re: spotted turtles posted by Kanuck on April 16, 2003 at 12:31:23:
I'm sorry you feel insulted.
Like you, I'm only here to share what I've learned and observed in my time keeping turtles, in the hopes that others can skip some of the mistakes I made and enjoy the hobby more, as well as learn and share themselves.
I gave my experience. I pointed out that outdoor living has resulted in more active and healthier animals. Perhaps there's some fine points you could use to reproduce the proper elements of nature indoors to come up with close or similar results with indoor housing. I haven't found any, though I've tried numorous and expensive ways of doing so. I have found ways of indoor housing that are superior to others, but space and sunshine and weather have been more of a leap for me. I used to keep all my animals indoors. I had rooms surrounded on all walls with tanks, and kiddie pools on the floor. I also successfully bred animals indoors. The exact same animals outdoors did exponentially better and now that my goal is keeping them outside all the time if possible, I've had only two illnesses, just two. Out of the numbers of turtles I keep, and what I dealt with before, this is a phenominal improvement.
I don't doubt they will breed and survive indoors if much attention and care is provided in housing them. I do know, from my own experience, that keeping them outdoors and using the same amount of care gives better results.
I realize not everyone can keep animals outdoors. I encourage it for all turtle species, but I'm would only dissuade someone from keeping one kind of turtle indoors. That would be the box turtle species of north america. The efforts required to keep them healthy in the long term (5 years or more) are not reasonable for most hobbyists. I have talked with two keepers with elaborate systems for mimicing weather and sun cycles that include morning and evening, misting for dewfall, etc, who have had reasonably good results over nearly 5 years, so I'd be interested to see if their efforts pan out longer. Other species that I've kept I can only give my observations that they are more active and have less health problems when outdoors, which to me speaks of being healthier.
As in any forum, there will probably be disagreement. Not agreeing with each other does not mean we need to take personal offense to each others statements. We can disagree and even argue vehemently about what we believe is true without resorting to personal insults.
Again, I apologize if you feel insulted by my posts. Please realize that my intention is to share information (the purpose of this forum) and I will not intentionally insult you.
