How to select soft-shelled turtle

Soft-shelled turtle refers to the soft-shelled turtle used for breeding. Under natural conditions, due to the influence of climate and the harm of natural enemies, soft-shelled turtles not only grow and develop slowly, but also have a low survival rate. Therefore, using artificial methods to strengthen the cultivation of soft-shelled turtles is the main key to solve the source of soft-shelled turtles and develop the production of soft-shelled turtles. The following problems should be paid attention to in the selection of soft-shelled turtles.

1. Age: generally speaking, the female and male soft-shelled turtles over 3 years old, that is, more than 0.25 kg, have mating behavior and the gonadal development is basically mature. It takes only 3 years of age in southern Taiwan and Hainan Island, while it takes more than 6 years in North China. In my opinion, the age suitable for breeding soft-shelled turtles should be the sexual maturity age of female soft-shelled turtles plus 1 year old, as the minimum reproductive age, generally 5 years old is moderate. It is difficult to determine the age of wild soft-shelled turtle, so when selecting, we should pay attention to the standard that the body weight is more than 0.5ml kg. The soft-shelled turtle of this specification spawns more times (3 mi 4 times a year), the number of eggs laid each time is also more (9 mi 22 per time), the hatching rate is high (more than 95%), and the hatched juvenile soft-shelled turtle is robust (the survival rate is more than 98%).

two。 Physical fitness: first of all, to see whether the appearance is normal, whether the skin is bright, but also pay attention to the soft-shelled turtle should be large, weight, thick skirt, back nail back edge hard wrinkles. This soft-shelled turtle has good nutritional status, strong physique and strong fecundity. In addition, when buying soft-shelled turtles in the market, we should pay attention to whether the soft-shelled turtles are injured and whether their activities are normal.

3. Selection of artificially cultured soft-shelled turtles: fully artificially cultured soft-shelled turtles are beneficial to improve the reproduction rate, and the artificially cultivated soft-shelled turtles basically adapt to the conditions and environment of artificial breeding, and the age of soft-shelled turtles is easy to identify, so it is better than using wild soft-shelled turtles as species. The differences between wild soft-shelled turtles and fully artificially cultured soft-shelled turtles are shown in Table 1. If the wild soft-shelled turtle is artificially reared for a long time, the density is reasonable and the water quality is fresh, it is difficult to distinguish it from artificial breeding.