(water trickling)
(turtle plops)
(slow motion turtle plop)
(water trickling)
- Get stoked guys, 'cause this episode
is about one of the largest freshwater turtles in the world.
(echoing whoosh) (strumming blues music)
Hey everybody, welcome to another episode.
This one's gonna be a lot of fun,
because it's all about alligator snapping turtles.
As a kid growing up, I always thought it would be amazing
to be able to house these guys one day,
and I always would've loved to have a large pair of them,
and that finally happened.
But I always said I would not house them
unless I could set them up properly.
Well, I'm finally able to do that.
The turtles are here.
It's an adult pair that needed a new home,
and I'm super excited to share with everybody
how this pond behind me came about.
(strumming blues music)
Alligator snapping turtles are, you know,
just unbelievably impressive.
They're one of the heaviest turtles in the world,
and heaviest freshwater turtle,
and they're also the largest freshwater turtle
in the United States.
I'm not sure what the record is.
I've heard a lot of different opinions about that,
you know, over 200 pounds or just at 200 pounds.
Ours are between 70 and 100, very large animals.
And, obviously, they can live for what seems like forever.
You know, some of these turtles are just absolutely ancient.
And what's amazing about them
is not only are they now broken down into actual species
based on their genetic makeup
and the river systems they occur in,
and also, some of the morphology to them
can actually be noted to differentiate them.
But you know, the things that they've evolved to do,
like if you've watched any of those,
you know, famous animal shows
where they show how the alligator snapping turtle
can blend in and look just like a log.
They also have a lure on the end of their tongue
that can be made to look like a worm.
So, this behavior is apparently more common
in hatchlings and juveniles, and not so much in adults,
according to Greg Brashear and some other people
that I've spoken to about the species.
But any animal, any given animal,
will lay on the bottom of the river or creek,
open the mouth, and just sit there motionless
while that little lure moves.
And then, you know, a fish comes in thinking
that it is an actual worm, and then boom, that's it.
Bye-bye fish.
So, they're a very primitive animal.
Incredible, absolutely impressive.
And, you know,
despite the fact that they can lay motionless
at the bottom of a lake, or pond, or a river,
they're animals that do move, you know?
They can move around at different times of the day,
even at night, and they'll forage and hunt.
They're not always just sitting still.
And that's one of the reasons why
I don't wanna keep them in a tub.
I want them to be in a nice large pond
with some flowing water that they can just enjoy
somewhat of a natural life in.
Just really, just fantastic creatures, really.
(gentle guitar music)
Luckily the spot that we chose to dig the pond
was not terribly hard to excavate,
and this is all thanks to the natural substrate
that we have down here.
It's very sandy and we didn't hit too many roots.
Still, it's a very large body of water
for some huge turtles, so it was a bit of a task.
So, it took us about a day to dig the pond.
You know, we split it up into two half days.
My brother-in-law was generous enough
to help me out with it.
And it's about 18 feet long, 14 feet wide,
four feet deep in the center,
and the rest is between two and three feet deep,
but it gradually slopes up on either end
so that the turtles can bask in shallow water,
which they like to do at times.
So, we've got the rock delivered.
This is a Pennsylvania Fieldstone.
I got two full pallets of it delivered.
And you can get this from garden centers,
and it's really nice stuff.
It's naturalistic looking
and it really adds some aesthetic appeal
to any turtle or tortoise enclosure, really.
And what this is gonna do
is it's going to line the pond liner
that's gonna go into the pond.
So, I've got my pond liner here.
It's a 20x25 roll, feet.
It's 45-mil, which is super strong stuff.
And I wouldn't recommend doing like a 20-mil thickness
when it comes to pond liner
for such a big, powerful turtle
like alligator snapping turtles.
Their claws aren't that sharp, but they are very powerful,
and they're big, obviously.
They've got like bear feet, you know?
So, we also have an underlayment here,
which is gonna go in first.
Then the liner will go on top of that.
And then, we're gonna line the whole thing
with this stone, with gravel and sand in between.
And I want to give a shout out to Greg Brashear
from Greg's Turtle Haven.
Greg is an absolute wealth of knowledge
when it comes to alligator snapping turtles
and some other species.
And he was gracious enough to walk me through this process,
because I've only experienced alligator snappers briefly
in my past where I've had some smaller ones,
but never a large adult pair like these guys.
So, we're gonna get going with this,
and hopefully get these guys in soon,
because right now, they're just sitting in tubs,
and they can barely turn around in them.
So, it's the only fair to get these guys
into a nice, big naturalistic enclosure
as soon as possible.
With the hole itself complete, I can now put in this,
which is the underliner.
This goes in first before the actual pond liner,
and it's to further protect the pond
from getting punctured by things like roots from trees.
It's basically a hardcore hardware cloth.
Then the actual 45-mil pond liner that will hold the water
goes in second on top of the underliner.
It's gonna be a mess.
You've gotta work out the kinks and the folded areas
and cut off the excess, but don't cut off the excess
until you see where the water line and level lands.
This way, you don't have to worry
about water spilling underneath the liner
and just creating a muddy mess everywhere.
You want it to be neat.
This way, it makes more room for the animals.
So, I've been lining this liner
with all this Pennsylvania Fieldstone,
tiering it, making sure it fits kind of like a puzzle,
which obviously, it's not perfectly going to be that way,
but I'm getting there.
And it's, it makes, you know, for easy ways
for the turtles to get up to the surface,
even though this pond isn't so deep
that the alligator snapping turtles
would have much of a hard time getting to the surface,
but better to be safe than sorry.
And again, this fieldstone is gonna help prevent punctures
in the liner.
You know, it's not, you know,
we're not sure if the snapping turtles
are actually that capable of puncturing them.
But again, these things have like bear paws, huge claws,
and better to be safe than sorry.
Because trying to find a leak in something like this
or having to fix it later on
would just be an absolute nightmare.
And as you can see, we've got enough projects going on here
with these animals to have to take a step backwards at all.
So, I'm gonna finish up getting all this stone in
trying to cover as much of the liner as I can.
And then, the next step is gonna cover even more
of the liner and kind of glue things together.
(chill guitar music)
Fortunately, dad was able to come down
and give me a hand fine tuning this thing.
And the next step is what really started
making things come together.
We got some bags of Portland cement,
mixed it with some of the natural sand
that we excavated when we dug the pond,
and we started spreading this dry
all in between the crevices
of all the Pennsylvania Fieldstone
that I laid out to cover this liner.
Now, big plus here, you all know
I love naturalistic looking enclosures and ponds.
So, this helps hide every single last ounce
of exposed liner.
And that's a must for me.
I can't stand seeing exposed liner at all.
It's just a reminder that it's not real,
it's something that I built.
So, this Portland cement mix with the sand
starts hiding the liner.
And then, all we do once we've spread it enough
and covered every nook and cranny
is we start spraying it down with water.
You can see here it's still dry as it's been spread,
but you can see there's really no exposed liner anymore.
It just, it looks great.
Now, you might be thinking this might be too rocky
for snapping turtles, because they like to hide
in mud and muck.
But again, this is just not only for aesthetic appeal,
it's to cover the liner so the turtles can't damage it
in any way.
So, we just spray it down now with some water,
let it harden overnight,
and then we'll probably spray it a couple more times,
get some natural rain on it, and then that's it.
This stuff will be fused, cemented, glued together.
There's no breaking it apart.
If there are any loose pieces,
we can fix them before we start filling the pond up
with water and getting the turtles in.
And just look at it.
It looks like a zoo exhibit.
This is Chi Chi.
Chi Chi is the female alligator snapping turtle
that belongs to our pair,
and she is considerably smaller than Chum, our male.
Some of you might be used to hearing
that female turtle or tortoise species
are larger than the males,
and that is the case with a lot of different types.
But when it comes to alligator snapping turtles,
and even some other types of turtles,
like say, take North American Wood Turtles for example,
the males are, in fact, the larger of the sexes.
Now, Chi Chi's shell is about 16 inches long,
while Chum's is about 24, 25 inches long,
so it is a considerable difference.
But fear not, that's normal,
that's the way it's supposed to be,
and these two should do just fine.
So, when it comes to diet,
unfortunately Chum and Chi Chi
have not been fed an appropriate diet for a very long time.
Certain things, like rodents, and chicken, and beef,
dog food and cat food,
or an overabundance of commercial turtle pellets,
are often what people feed this species in captivity,
and that's really not what you should be doing.
Those things are okay occasionally,
but Chum and Chi Chi are gonna get a diet
that is comprised mainly of fish, whole fish,
and crustaceans: clams, snails, crabs.
And we're gonna get them back into shape.
As you can see, Chi Chi is a little bit on the heavy side,
and you know, we just want these guys to be healthy
and to be able to live as natural of a life as possible
in this big pond here outdoors year round.
So, there you have it.
Chum and Chi Chi, the alligator snapping turtles
of Garden State Tortoise.
Alligator snapping turtles are heavy and huge,
so it's a little bit of a challenge
trying to hop over a two foot wall
to get the turtles in the pond
without injuring the turtle or myself
by possibly getting bit.
So, my buddy Scott Hendrickson here
helped me simply lower them into the pond on a board.
This is the male going in, and it went very well.
Whoop. - Oh, that was a good one.
Perfect. - Yeah, that was perfect.
- [Scott] He didn't even take a hard fall.
(chill guitar music) (birds chirping)
- There he goes. - Wow.
- That's what I wanted to see. - He looks happy.
- Alright.
It was super crucial for me
to get these turtles in immediately,
because they had been sitting for so long
in less than optimal conditions.
So, the pond here's not done yet.
(water trickling) The walls of the enclosure
are actually 30 inches tall with a 10 inch lip on top.
They're made out of the same pressure treated planks
that I use other enclosures.
Now, the tall walls and the lip
are to further prevent escapes.
Even though alligator snapping turtles are peaceful animals
and they rarely leave the water
except for females laying eggs,
you don't wanna have an accident
with a neighbor, a child, a pet, whatever.
Their bite force is incredible,
so just make sure that they stay secure,
and that's what you should do with any animal.
Now that we're adding aesthetics to the pond,
you can see that it's starting to come together.
The grasses and oaks at the back
will come in fuller every year,
and the water now has a lot of sediment at the bottom.
We throw a lot of the natural earth back in
to give the turtles some security
so that they're not just sitting on rock.
A 2,000 gallon per hour submersible pump.
Pump pumps the water through tubing,
and I actually fit it to come out of this hollowed out log.
It's the dead base of an Atlantic White Cedar,
and just so happened to work out
and it looks naturalistic.
Logs across the corners of the pond
help to offer the turtles some shade.
And we're gonna be adding some aquatic life,
mainly water hyacinth and water lettuce,
because they filtrate the pond, and that's what you want.
Water lilies also work.
So do parrots feather.
Naturalistic ponds that are biological
need some kind of filtration, and palms are great for that.
But the turtles are doing fantastic in here,
and I am just loving the way this pond came out,
and I can't wait to see it mature.
Believe me, I'm gonna show it off to you guys.
Despite their menacing look and that huge size
with such a powerful bite,
alligator snapping turtles are a peaceful species.
They're not out to hurt anybody or anything,
except the pray that they need to eat to survive.
However, breeding between a male and a female
can be pretty intense.
So, of course, we have to be prepared at any given time
to separate Chi Chi and Chum
in case Chum starts getting out of control.
This species, obviously, is well equipped
to deal with these kinds of things,
and there is an ample amount of space in this pond.
However, this is not nature,
and the turtles can not fully escape each other if need be.
So, should that issue arise, we, of course,
will separate them and make sure that everything is safe
before they go back together again.
(water trickling) (chill guitar music)
So, there you go, another brand new project in the bag,
alligator snapping turtle pond.
I'm super excited for this one, but then again,
I'm excited for everything that we do here.
I just I always wanted big alligator snapping turtles,
like I said in the beginning of this video,
but I didn't wanna do it until I could offer them
what they need.
So, being able to do that is,
it's very heartwarming, and I'm really excited
to see some naturalistic behavior with these guys.
I'm gonna monitor them closely over the winter.
Luckily, with our milder winters here,
we do have a lot of success with some turtle species
that normally come from Florida
or the southern portion of the United States already.
To name a few, Florida Box Turtles, Gulf Coast Box Turtles,
Three Stripe Mud Turtles, Razorback Musk Turtles.
We get to leave them outside for the winter
and everybody does great.
We never lost anyone.
So, luckily, the alligator snapping turtle's natural range
does go pretty far north, so they can handle some cold.
So, I think they're gonna do fine.
Thank you guys so much for watching,
again for the support.
I'm gonna keep doing these videos for you
as much as I can.
Please don't forget to like, subscribe and share.
Tell everybody about these videos.
I just want to share as much information
about these amazing animals as I can with the world.
So, I will see you in the next episode.
(chill guitar music)