New Year, Same Turtle Team

Hello! Welcome to the 2021 Turtle Team blog! If you're new here, my name is Kelcie Fredrickson and I am a rising third year veterinary student and the 2021 Turtle Team leader. This summer, like every summer, we are doing population based health assessments in Eastern and Ornate box turtles throughout Illinois and Tennessee. Turtle [...]

New Year, Same Turtle Team2021-05-12T15:00:33-05:00

Turtle team’s final week

Katy is introducing our recaptured turtle Rose to trees. During the final week of turtle team's field season, we were joined by a few familiar faces! Fourth years Ivana, Brina and Katy joined us while fulfilling their professional development requirement for clinics. This week, we visited the same sites as we did in [...]

Turtle team’s final week2020-07-29T09:52:39-05:00

Turtle Tour Part 4: Turtle Work-Ups

Throughout all of these posts, you may have been wondering what we do with the turtles after we catch them and hopefully this post answers all those questions! Once we catch the turtles in the field, we place them in pencil cases with a letter associated with their ID. These pencil cases are placed in [...]

Turtle Tour Part 4: Turtle Work-Ups2020-07-21T20:33:17-05:00

Turtle Tour 2020™ Part 2: Eastern Box Turtles

  After a week in the field, the days following get pretty crazy! The first thing we do upon our return to the lab, is unpack the truck and put the samples in the freezer. Most days, we still have unfinished lab work to complete for the turtles we sampled that day in the field, [...]

Turtle Tour 2020™ Part 2: Eastern Box Turtles2020-06-23T17:22:16-05:00

Turtle Tour 2020 Part 1: Ornate Box Turtles

This week we kicked things off at two locations in Illinois sampling Ornate Box Turtles (OBTs). At our first site, we didn't find as many turtles as we had hoped for but that doesn't mean they weren't there! Our dogs search by picking up on scent trails left during a turtle's morning migration. Due to [...]

Turtle Tour 2020 Part 1: Ornate Box Turtles2020-06-15T20:35:45-05:00

Our Trip to Tennessee: The Last Week of Turtle Team

Our final week of turtle team began at 4:00am when Marta and I met at the lab to pack all of our supplies and equipment into a SUV. Just as the sun began to rise at 5am, we were off and headed to Tennessee. With only a couple of quick food and rest stops, we [...]

Our Trip to Tennessee: The Last Week of Turtle Team2017-08-17T15:32:50-05:00

2nd Week of Vermilion County

After our week of trudging through marshes in heavy wadders, we made our way back to land to finish off our last turtle team week in Vermilion County. While this week was slower than our previous ones, we still managed to find 27 turtles in 4 days! The highs of the week were finding a [...]

2nd Week of Vermilion County2017-08-09T10:09:30-05:00

Week 3: Forbes State Park

Marta teaching students how to perform venipuncture from the subcarapacial sinus This week we traveled to Stephen A. Forbes State Park with a group of 19 students in search of eastern box turtles. We started the week off by driving 2 hours to the field site with a caravan of 7 cars. [...]

Week 3: Forbes State Park2017-08-09T10:09:30-05:00

Week 2: Vermilion County

The first week of Turtle Team is in the books! And I guess this blog... Our first week was very close to home in Vermilion County at four different sites within the Forest Preserve. We brought with us: John and his turtle dogs Paulo, a visiting veterinarian from Peru 20 veterinary medicine students The week [...]

Week 2: Vermilion County2017-08-09T10:09:30-05:00
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