Hatching baby painted turtles

Today I am going to share a little story with you, my first "pet" was a painted turtle, for years I had turtles, Myrtle, Bertle, Squirtle, I always had turtles since I was probably able to walk HA  ok so maybe not that young, but for a L O N G time, I love their little faces, just adorable

Well as I grew older and had kids of my own, we would take our walks down along the creek and the roadside in late summer to watch at night the turtles that would come up along the edge of the road and lay their eggs, then the next day we would find that the raccoons and/or possum would dig them up in the night and eat the eggs! well that started our mission, we would sneak down later and re-dig up those nests and carefully place them in my flowerpots buried in my gardens so they could survive and hatch out, then we turned them lose in our swamp behind the house.

The kids' school principal was also into reptiles and amphibians, he taught classes on it at the local Kent State branch, so I stared collecting things for him to show off during his classes, he has used my photos AND has taken a few of the babies to use to show the class as well, so here I am going to share with you my hatchling who we called "Speedie" because that little critter was fast!

Here he is (I say he, but I don't know at this age, never looked!!) isn't he precious, just look at that face!

He is 7 days old here, and about to be released

so back to the story, we know about how long it takes for the turtle eggs to hatch, when the time gets close, within a few days, we put a screen over top the flower pot and start peeking at it off and on during the days that lead up to the first time you see the soil start to "move" when that happens everyone gathers around and just waits for them to peek a little head out of the soil

once we see a head, usually it's not too long and they will push their way up and out of the soil, this day I was taking photos for the principal, so we removed a little dirt to get the photos

awww soo sweet

another view of this one hatching, we don't touch them or mess with them, when they come up above soil and look like they are ready to get out, then we remove them and place in a very very small aquarium with a little water and a rock that is covered with a paper towel so it doesn't harm the egg sac you can still see on their underside, this is how they get their food for a few days after hatching, sometimes they don't emerge from the soil until it's gone and it's time to head for water

once that completely absorbs then it's time to set them free

but not before we enjoy little Speedie for a day or two or in this case, "the runt" stayed till day 7

we offer up little freeze dried shrimp, they LOVE it

they even take it out of your hand LOL - we keep them less than a week normally, and then turn them lose, and hope they make it ~ we also do this for the snapping turtles, such a neat thing for the kids to see - to watch the mother lay the eggs, then get to see them hatch instead of getting eaten before they ever had a chance :) 

Thanks Speedie for the great photos, it was nice knowing you, we hope you are out there somewhere!