Just like human babies, turtle babies can be very fragile and sensible. So you have to be very careful about what you feed them, but luckily there is no major difference between the diet of a baby snapping turtle and an adult snapping turtle.
What do baby snapping turtles eat? The diet of a baby snapping turtle is very similar to that of an adult, the only difference is that they should eat more proteins. Overall their diet is should contain:
- Berries
- Fruits
- Vegetables
- Insects
- Worms
- Fish
- Meat
- Pellets
As you can see they can eat almost anything, but what’s important to know is that you have to be very careful with the amount of food that you give them.
How Much Food You Should Give Your Baby Snapping Turtle
There are two major ways of feeding your turtle.
The first one of them is known as the 15 minutes method. This method implies that you should give your turtle as much food as you can, but only for 15 minutes. But this is not the best method because it can lead to overfeeding. The other method is known as the size of the head method and is the one that I would recommend to you.
The Size of the Head Method
This method says that you should feed your turtle the same amount of food that it would take to fill its head ( without the neck ) if it were hollow.
The simplest way to put this method into practice is to find a small container, like a medicine cup, a shot glass, or a bottle cap. This container has to be approximately the same size as the head of your turtle, without the neck. Then you fill that container to the top, and then you can feed the food inside the container to your turtle.
You don’t always have to use a container, you can always just estimate the food that you would need to fill its head. If you sometimes give your turtle a little too much food, and sometimes you give it a little too much, things will be just fine. Your turtle won’t be affected by small differences.
This method works great because it takes into consideration the size of the turtle, and gives you a fixed amount of food that you have to give your turtle. And as the turtle grows the amount of food will change.
This is the method I use to feed my turtle, and the results are great so far. During my research, a lot of people that used this method had great results, and nobody had any problem with it.
Foods that you should avoid
I said that snapping turtles can eat almost any kind of meat and vegetation but there are some exceptions to this. The following foods that I am going to list are bad for your turtle and you should try to avoid keeping them in places that your turtle can reach because even if they are bad for them they will still eat them since they don’t know that those foods are bad for them.
Spinach. Spinach inhibits calcium absorption which is very important for turtles, especially when they are young.
Foods with a high amount of oxalic acid. Oxalic acid is a very toxic acid in high concentrations. It can be found in a lot of foods that we eat daily, but these doses are really small. A dangerous amount for humans starts from 15 grams, but for turtles, the amount is a lot smaller. Here is a list of common plants and vegetables that contain a high amount of oxalic acid that should be avoided ( the amount of oxalic acid is per 100g of the respective plant or vegetable ) :
Chives – 1.48 g
Parsley – 1.70 g
Spinach – 1.30 g
String Beans – 1. 35 g
Blackberries – 1.45 g
Avocado – 1.60 g
Amaranth – 1.09 g
Cassava – 1.26 g
Purslane – 1.31 g
Nuts. Nuts also contain high doses of oxalic acid, the amount will differ from nut to nut but all of them contain doses that are too high. Nuts also contain too much protein per gram. Turtles need protein but too much of it can also be bad.
Raw meat. As we all know raw chicken can carry disease and bacteria, so it’s simply easier to avoid feeding your turtle raw meat, than worrying about health problems.
Goldfishes. There are multiple reasons why goldfishes are not good for turtles, one of them is the fact that they contain too much fat which can be bad for turtles, and they also contain thiaminase, which is known to cause neurological problems.
Conclusion
So this article should’ve explained everything that you should know about what snapping baby turtles eat, how you should feed them, and what you shouldn’t feed them. But if you still have questions you can leave them in the comment section and I will answer them as soon as possible.
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