Biological characteristics of snapping turtle
Classification status of 1. 1
Crocodiles and crocodiles of Chordata (Chordata), Vertebrate (Vertebrate), Reptilia (Reptilia), Tortoise (Turtle), Tortoiseshell, Cryptobranchia (Chelatoidea) to prevent snapping up turtles (Schweigger). The scientific name of the big snapping turtle: Macroclemys, English name: Snatch, and the scientific name of the small snapping turtle: Chelydra Serpentina SAP, English name: common snapping turtle, four subspecies of small snapping turtle: 1) Acutirostis South American snapping turtle, also known as fake snapping turtle; 2) osceola snapping turtle in Florida can grow to 17 inch and weigh 45 pounds; 3) rossignonii China and American snapping turtles, also known as soft-shelled turtles; 4)serpentina North American snapping turtle, also known as kowtowing turtle.
1.2
Mainly distributed in North America, Central America and the southeastern United States. Miami is an important growing area for snapping turtles. The distribution of snapping turtles in different parts of the United States, the south turtle "He" and the north turtle said that their body color can be divided into "yellow back" and "black back snapping turtle", and the black back snapping turtle is resistant to high temperature. China mainly imports varieties from Florida, USA. Except for a few crocodiles distributed in Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Hainan, Guangdong and other provinces, most of them come from Guangxi, Hunan, Shandong and Sichuan.
The optimum temperature range is 1.3.
2℃? Normal living at 38℃ can overwinter normally. When it exceeds 100℃ and 12℃ to shallow hibernation, it enters deep dormancy at 6℃ from 15℃ to 17℃, slightly more than 18℃ and normal feeding activity at 20℃. The activity is best at 33℃, and the food is 28℃? The optimum growth temperature is 30℃, above 34℃, it is inactive, and the underwater sediments decrease in summer.
The maximum record size is 1.4.
Big snapping turtle primary body 8? 10g, and the average adult size is 6 1? 76 cm 77? The highest records of 9 1 kg were 79 cm and 107 kg (Brookfield Zoo, Chicago); The average newborn shell of a small snapping turtle is 3.3 cm long and weighs 7.2 g (minimum 3. 1 cm, 5.8 g, maximum 3.7 cm, 14.8 g), which is the size of an average adult, and the shell length is 3 1? 46 cm, weight 23? 36 kg, the largest individual in essence reaches more than 38 kg. Ordinary turtle eggs are small snapping turtles. Oval shape is spherical, white and 23? 33 mm, egg 7? 15g。
General characteristics of 1.5
The upper jaw of snapping turtle is beak-shaped, and there are countless antennae hooked on its head, neck and abdomen. The ridge is vertical and the shell is brown. Each shield has a protrusion, a brown belly shell, an upper shield, a long tail, a floor and a worm-like appendage. They often lie motionless in the water, and their open-mouthed appendages attract the mouths of nearby fish.
The maxilla of a small snapping turtle has a small hook, only a few tentacles, a brown or dark brown shell, three longitudinal ridges and a slightly raised ridged rib shield, which gradually wears away with time. The carapace is gray, the edge shield is the highest, and the tail is slightly shorter. The most striking feature is that the posterior spine of the tail is also called serrated ridge, and the tail.
1.6 Gender differences
The female snapping turtle's carapace is square, and the edge of reproductive spacing is thin, while the male carapace is rectangular, with a long and thick tail base, and the reproductive spacing is far from the edge of the carapace.
In addition to the above functions, the reproductive pores of the small snapping turtle are located at the end of the tail thorn or spine and the male and female reproductive pores of the tail thorn except for the first washing.
1.7 Living habits
The basic habits of big snapping turtles are similar to those of small snapping turtles. Usually water, land, dashes and broken barrels. The big snapping turtle suddenly attacked other animals, and the little snapping turtle turned around with his body, even after finding the target, he caught it. Fingers or toes are webbed, aquatic products, resting in deep rivers, lakes, mires, and habitats that occasionally contact salt water. Under the condition of artificial breeding, snapping turtles have good adaptability in shallow water and deep water, but their swimming ability in larval stage is not strong, so shallow water environment should be given. Crocodile turtles are omnivorous and carnivorous animals. Their staple foods are fish, shrimp, frogs, salamanders, snakes, ducks, waterfowl, fresh aquatic plants and fruit drop. Feed at night. The reproductive habits of snapping turtles and snapping turtles are not exactly the same. The mating season of small snapping turtles is April165438+1October in the United States, and the spawning period is May-August (high temperature zone promotes the extension of spawning time), generally every time 15? 40. According to the actual size and development degree of the female turtle, it can be seen from anatomy that the female turtle lays 80 kilograms of eggs in the breeding season, including 20 hard-shell eggs. /kloc-0 spawns many times a year. I've seen 9 kg parent turtles spawn 1 10, all of which are fertilized and hatched young turtles. The mating season of American snapping turtles is 2 to 4 months, and the spawning period is 4 to 6 months. 52。 Under natural conditions, the incubation period of eggs of big snapping turtle and small snapping turtle is 9? 18 weeks, the incubation period of cool and dry weather will be longer. Artificial temperature control can shorten the incubation period of snapping turtle eggs, and snapping turtles can hatch at 32℃ for 60 days.
2 farming techniques
2. 1 turtle pond construction
The new turtle farm should be located in a place with water, quiet environment and convenient transportation. The main body of the turtle pond includes the turtle pond itself, grain, land, water intake and drainage system, overflow port and so on. Land use and turtle resting land are used to establish spawning grounds in the land part of the parent turtle pond.
Turtle pond, brick cement structure, cylinder surface cement polishing to prevent turtle skin abrasion. Generally wide, from east to west, from north to south, rectangles and circles will also be completed. According to local conditions, the depth is 50? 80 cm, the deepest dimension does not exceed 120CM. Pool week 8? 10cm anti-escape back side, also called rolling. The rectangular tank bottom has a horizontal inclined plane, which is circularly arranged as the bottom of the pot to facilitate the bottom of the sewage tank.
Eat13 into the water, 2/3 out of the water, and the water surface is inclined at 30 degrees, also called approach slope. In fact, in the underwater part of the food table, if it is a turtle-friendly swimming pool, the water food unit guides the turtles to climb the spawning ground. Fresh set faces south, and turtle pond on the north side is more reasonable. The width of food is about 2 meters, and the length is 80% of the length of the pool. Spawning ground width 2? 3 meters, the long dining table is the same as the venue, full of 20? The deep sand is 30 cm. The inverted canopy is beneficial to the turtle spawning ground to lay eggs in rainy days.
The diameter of the inlet drain pipe shall be at least 10 cm. In order to speed up the drainage of the water inlet and facilitate the discharge of sewage, it should be noted that the sewage outlet should be located below the nearby groundwater level, because turtles are fed to the nearby table near the dirt in food. Overflow, the highest water level above the wall of turtle pond, is beneficial to the discharge of organic suspended solids and the spillway in rainstorm season.
Turtle pond, repeatedly soaked in clear water for at least a week to remove alkalinity. After disinfection with 150ppm quicklime, a new stream of water is released before stocking.
2.2 Crocodile turtle breeding
2.2. 1 female turtle selection
Generally speaking, endangered turtles choose wild original species, requiring good health, no trauma and internal injuries, over 5 years old, with a specification of 2.5KG, preferably 5KG. The breeding seeds of snapping turtles must be 4 years old and 6 kilograms in size, and the turtles are healthier. Under good conditions, the amount of eggs laid by sexually mature female turtles can be observed with eyes, touched by hands and illuminated. If checked, the female turtles and male turtles are lively. Both females and males are flexible. When the snapping turtle touches its head, it should immediately open its mouth, make an appeal and make a sound, which shows its fierce nature. Kissing the turtle's legs and feet is better, and they are all retracted. Carefully observe whether the head and neck of the turtle can freely choose whether to check the cervical lymph nodes, open your mouth to see if there is a hook in the throat, and check whether there is a hook in the turtle with a metal detector. The size of the sex ratio of soft-shelled turtles, taking wild soft-shelled turtles as an example, is generally 2: 1 about 2.5kg for parents, 3: 1 about 4kg for medium-sized soft-shelled turtles, and then some parents are more than 5kg according to the ratio of 4: 1.
2.2.2 Parent turtle breeding
In order to promote the gonad development of the parent turtle, keep the environment quiet, add fresh water to the sewage in time, and disinfect the water in the parent turtle pond, it is necessary to use microecological agents, so that the disinfectants mainly composed of bacteria and probiotics can not be used at the same time, and there is no residue of common probiotic photosynthetic bacteria and EM such as quicklime, chlorine dioxide, PVP-I, hydrofluoric acid and enoxacin. Use fresh animal feed, such as miscellaneous fish, shrimp, snail, mussel, earthworm and bait, to prevent feeding deterioration. It can be used for salt immersion disinfection of animal feed. If wild relatives breed turtles, the feeding time is mainly at night, 70% in the morning, and the remaining 30% are gradually domesticated for daytime feeding. If you don't domesticate, you can increase your workload at night. In artificial breeding of parent turtles, 40% of the feed is fed in the morning and evening, and 60% is fed in the morning and evening. According to the nutritional requirements of turtle feed, vitamins and minerals can be added to the feed and nutrient solution can be added to the bait fish, which is a green additive beneficial to turtle gonad development such as traditional Chinese medicine, mold preparation, bioactive chromium and probiotics.
2.2.3 Hatching of turtle eggs
Collect turtle eggs. At 9 o'clock the next day after spawning at night, usually after the afternoon party. Incubators, marks and other records of newly mined snapping turtle eggs. In the collection box, the sand in the incubator directly before and after the store gently snapped up the turtle eggs and won. The animal pole at one end of the white fertilization point is upward, and the boundary between the animal pole and the plant pole is about 10cm thick. Obviously, the boundary is unclear, and fertilization points are dotted. This fertilized egg can't see the fertilization point of the unfertilized egg. Experience shows that the unfertilized eggs with sand on the surface of snapping turtles have smooth and sand-free surfaces. Why snapping up the egg protein mesangium of snapping turtle eggs will affect hatching.
Incubator. Food turnover boxes, wooden boxes and foam boxes, rather than the crocodile egg layer in the middle, are all located on the beach. The height of the spawning box is more than1.6mm. Thick eggs have 3CM of sand, around the eggs there are 3 cm of sand, and the superstructure of the eggs has 4 cm of sand. The interval between eggs is advanced for ventilation. The basic sand is 1/2, 1/2, and the grain size of fine sand is 0. It is also feasible to use sponge instead of sand in culture medium.
Culture temperature control equipment. National patent automatic heating temperature control device (ZL 95239 104. X) is a reliable and practical device, with adjustable power supply and temperature, fully automatic operation without supervision.
Incubation room can also be specially built by using the structure of the inner corner of the house. The key thermal insulation materials around the indoor walls of the incubator must be placed in the thermal insulation materials. A frame incubator is arranged indoors, and the incubator is placed in a rack. The layers of the frame are separated by a certain distance, which is convenient for watering and moisturizing. Another method is to put the incubator directly on the ground, and then put the second layer on the incubator brick at the four corners of the brick, so that it is stacked layer by layer. Another method is to spread a layer of sand directly on the floor and spread it on the beach accordingly. There is a layer of eggs in the incubation room, and a water tank is built on the sand bed next to it, and the hatched turtles automatically climb into the water tank. In addition, a special incubator is used, the inner layer is placed in a small box of the incubator, and the internal temperature control equipment and small fan are used to simulate the hatching method of beetles.
Temperature, humidity and ventilation are the three elements of snapping turtle hatching, and they are also eternal themes. All turtles can hatch. Crocodile turtles need to hatch at a constant temperature of 32℃, and the hatched young turtles need to hatch for about 60 days. The temperature of sand is inconsistent with that of air, which is generally controlled at 32℃ and 35℃ ... Humidity control includes absolute humidity, relative humidity, absolute humidity, and the requirements of manual molding group with sand moisture content of about 8%. The relative humidity of the air in the incubator can be measured by a hygrometer, and 85% relative humidity is needed to raise snapping turtles. It is more appropriate to spray water by hand occasionally during incubation. Some young turtles formed by fertilized eggs should be watered as little as possible and kept dry to prevent premature delivery due to too much water stimulation. In addition, too much watering is not conducive to the breathing and ventilation of fertilized eggs.
1? During the temporary rearing period of larvae after 2 weeks, the yolk sac of newly hatched larvae lasted for about 2 days, and then gradually absorbed and entered the artificial temporary rearing process. Young turtles can choose egg yolk, liver, red worms and special compound feed. The density of plastic flowerpots is per square meter 100 relay containers. Please note that the water should not be too deep, it should be 2 to 3 cm, and the coverage of turtles is limited. If the water level is too deep, it may be because the newly hatched young turtles are not strong enough to swim, which may easily lead to flooding. Moreover, it is shallow, the water quality deteriorates, and it is easy to change water frequently. In small containers, change water, 65438+ 0-2 times a day. Generally, large ponds are temporarily maintained, which is dedicated to changing water every 48 hours.
2.3 Industrialized turtle breeding
After the temporary rearing period, the young turtles enter the stage of industrial reproduction. At this stage, through the factory with automatic temperature control technology, the newly hatched baby turtle is kept in the best environment to speed up its growth and shorten its breeding cycle. The larvae gradually enter winter. In the natural state, turtles in poor health will have a hard winter, leading to more deaths. Under artificial conditions, providing the best temperature and complete feed, taking necessary ecological control measures and winter, the specification of greenhouse spring rearing is about 500g. With the increase of summer temperature, young turtles move out of the greenhouse environment and keep the natural open-air swimming pool, and grow to 1500g commercial turtles in a few months. Practice has proved that the growth rate of young turtles in the slow growth stage is getting faster and faster when they snap up more than 250 grams, while in the outdoor culture stage with an average monthly weight of more than 200 grams, when they reach the body shape of 500 grams, the growth rate is very amazing. In other words, 1.500g snapping turtle is only 1 year old. If it is cultured at natural temperature, not only 1.500g commercial turtles with low survival rate need to be cultured for three years. Industrialized breeding of snapping turtles can shorten the breeding cycle. The ever-changing market has created favorable opportunities to reduce unit costs and improve competitiveness.
Basic points of industrial breeding of snapping turtle: 1) shed construction. An efficient and energy-saving greenhouse for storing thermal energy needs not only investment, but also improvement of thermal insulation performance. The roof insulation material uses two layers of thin films sandwiched around the wall clips. What needs special attention is that the indoor floor must be paved with thermal insulation materials, and the thermal insulation and energy-saving effect of thermal insulation materials is new and domestic in greenhouses. Only by raising turtles in this way can the principle of greenhouse refrigeration be the same and the heat preservation effect be guaranteed. 2) Temperature control device. The advanced patented technology can be used for the automatic hot water circulating heating device of energy-saving greenhouses in small or large greenhouses, and it has obtained the patent certificate issued by China National Intellectual Property Administration with the patent number ZL 0 1, 217,344.4. The biggest feature of this patent is that the change of warm water needs to adjust the air and water body of greenhouse which is fully closed and automatically heated. The key is the automatic circulation of hot water to ensure the use of anthracite, and the coal consumption per square meter is only 500 grams per day, which is remarkable in energy saving. 3) Aeration equipment. Greenhouse is characterized by high temperature, high density and high pollution. Oxygen helps to improve water quality, decompose organic matter and reduce pollution. Under normal circumstances, it supports a 2.2 kW greenhouse ventilator with an area of 500 square meters. 4) The water intake and drainage system and the bottom of the pond need certain requirements for sloping turtle ponds and outdoor construction. It is simple and feasible to insert the sewage outlet and PVC pipe with the diameter of 10cm into the sealed drainage system. 5) Food group. Slopes and asbestos go to turtle pond, and underwater 1/3 and 2/3 are under the water surface where feed is fed on the food table, and gradually turn into a feeding state where water supply is beneficial to observation, so as to reduce bait. 6) Disinfection and disease prevention. Regular use of lime slurry to dilute the whole pool water, automatic disinfection of turtle water, and the use of advanced ozone generator have good results and low cost. 7) Feeding configuration. Make your own feed, buy a small feed production unit and use the most advanced feed formula in China. White fish meal, α-starch, plant protein, minerals, vitamins, probiotics and prebiotics in the feed raw materials of snapping turtles can be added with other green feed additives to promote the economic growth of snapping turtles, thus reducing the occurrence of nutritional diseases and improving the survival rate of breeding. 8) Feeding management. Small snapping turtles are fed with compound feed at the development stage. Water, corn oil and fish oil need to be added to powder feed to make soft particles or slugs and dining tables. If the cultured snapping turtle species are fed with puffed feed to float on the water, it will form a dynamic bait to lure the settled snapping turtle to swallow. Feed it twice a day, and basically eat it in two hours every time except for a little. When the water quality changes and high concentration of ammonia is found, it is necessary to change the water. The hydrochemical analysis method can be to automatically detect the water quality with classical or modern instruments in conditional turtle farms, monitor the activities of snapping turtles in greenhouses with computers, and take immediate measures when problems are found. Modern technology has been able to realize automatic detection, automatic water improvement, automatic analysis and automatic alarm. Remind "warm water changes" during feeding. When young turtles move indoors and outdoors, they will gradually heat up. When young turtles are outdoors, they will gradually calm down and pay attention to the temperature balance. Always remember the whole word 12 in agriculture: "environmental regulation, structural regulation, biological regulation" and taste it.