Last week, I joined Alexis and Michelle on their final week of fieldwork. Unfortunately, there won't be a video in this post because while I was busy trying not to flood my waders and destroy my phone, they were busy taking all of the photos. Our main goal was to catch and resample the 19 [...]
Now that field season is officially over (yes, tears have been shed by many), Dr. Allender, Michelle and I took a small field trip over to the University of Illinois Veterinary Teaching Hospital to deliver a surprise to our 3rd and 4th year students who were unable to join us in the field. While you [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
When we don't get to sample cute turtles, we get to catch up on things around the lab! During field weeks, we collect samples such as cloacal-oral swabs, blood and shell swabs which need to be extracted. These samples are used to test for pathogens and diseases that may affect these turtles. You may [...]
This week I had the honor of finding and sampling Blandings turtles in Illinois! I got bust out the waders from the storage closet and yes, they did in fact have water in them...STILL. After a three hour drive and coffee break later, it was time to check the traps! While the traps that [...]
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, [...]
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 [...]
We have some exciting news! Next week we will begin our Turtle Tour of 2020 with some sassy yet classy Ornate Box Turtles (OBTs). These last two weeks have been pretty hectic in the lab between packing, ordering last minute supplies, a freezer mishap and animal care but we are finally ready to go! Check [...]
Hi everyone and welcome to the 2020 Box Turtle blog (a.k.a. The BEST blog)! My name is Kelcie Fredrickson and I am a rising second year veterinary student at the University of Illinois. The blog’s main focus will be on our health surveillance program which monitors box turtle population health and will feature my student [...]
