Hello beloved readers! Alexis and Maura reporting live from our lab in Champaign, reminding about the final week in the field. The last week in the field was definitely bittersweet for all! The week started off while Joey and Natalie placed traps at the two final sites of the field season, Alexis and Maura took [...]
Hello beloved readers! Another exciting week out in the field catching turtles. This week Bill had family vacation, so as the saying goes "while the boss was away the kids decided to play" (also known as work hard). The week started off with one hot and humid Monday. Alexis, Maura, and Joey faced the unruly heat [...]
Just a cute headstart as compensation for the delayed blog! Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. It's been a while but I've been up to some pretty amazing stuff while saving the world all at the same time. Three weeks ago, we discovered that there were 35 headstarts up in Lake County that needed [...]
It's been awhile, what in the world have I been up to??? Keep reading and see! During my first week of the 2021 field season, I had the honor of joining Lauren in Cape Cod sampling box turtles! After a grueling 17 hour drive out there, the week definitely lived up to my expectations. [...]
Hello readers! Alexis and Maura here to cover another week out in the field! This week we took on two different sites to find the beloved turtles! While there was an initial excitement of new sites, this week brought on many challenges including in-climate weather and getting our water legs back in action. Although new to the [...]
Hello readers! As promised, we have returned with a full week of field work under our belts. Well, Maura did a full week of field work while Alexis split halfway through the week to move out of her house back in Champaign. Last week was a pretty brief post so we wanted to take a moment [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
