Pet Turtle Care: Signs and Symptoms of a Box Turtle Eye Infection

Pet Turtle Care

Box turtles are great pets with real character but they are not the easiest turtles to care for in comparison to other turtles who are much easier to look after. Although I must say all turtles need a certain level of maintenance. When taking on the responsibility of caring for a turtle you will inevitably come up against some health issues, one of them might be a turtle eye infection.

If you think your turtle has an eye infection the first thing you should do is look for any other accommodating problems such as your turtle having a runny nose, breathing with their mouth open and wheezing or gasping while taking in breathes of air. If you have spotted any or all of these symptoms then it's very likely that your box turtle has a respiratory infection and will need to see the vet as soon as possible.

If your box turtle has swollen eyes they may be having an allergic reaction to the substrate that you are using in their enclosure. Some turtles are allergic to earthly substrates and will have swelling around the eyes as a result of their allergy towards this sort of bedding. If your using earth or soil based bedding then try replacing the bedding with another and monitoring your turtle for a week or so to see if the swelling goes down. If the swelling continues then you will know that it was not an allergic reaction and your turtles eye problem may have something to do with a lack of vitamin A in their diet.

Vitamin A deficiency can be a cause of swelling in the eyes of box turtles and a way you can treat this is to make sure you are introducing foods that are high in vitamin A as a part of your turtles diet every time you feed them. Foods such as Collard greens, carrots, kale and parsley all contain a good amount of vitamin A and can be added to each meal to help fight against this problem.

Of course if the problem continues then you have no choice but to take your turtle to the vet as soon as possible and it may be a case where in order to cure your box turtle's eye infection the vet will need to give vitamin injections to your box turtle to help them get back to perfect health.