Anybody have a box turtle for a pet?

[SkyPup]

The common route of all Salmonella transmission if Fecal to Oral, so cleanliness and personal hygiene is of paramount importance!

 

[IslandTractor]

I have also heard of possible salmonella problems with turtles and took precautions when my grandson wanted one we found. I let him (the turtle) swim around in a WEAK solution of water and clorox for a few minutes. It didn't seem to bother him and I doubt it helped much. But no problems developed. I tend to be cautious when it comes to my grandson.

A weak clorox solution would be more likely to hurt the turtle than the salmonella. Salmonella are enteric organisms, they live in the turtle's gut so would not be affected by the chlorine bath. There is no truly safe way to insure a turtle does not carry the organism short of doing multiple expensive stool cultures.

Salmonella can be a nasty organism but is actually less likely to cause severe disability than the E. coli O157 which is the organism associated with the spinach outbreaks. Salmonella infections are generally curable with antibiotics if they become serious and while they occasionally kill these infections are mostly self limited (though unpleasant and potentially spread to family members via contaminated food preparation). E coli O157 however is a fairly unique organism that causes hemolytic uremic syndrome and can result in permanent kidney damage or worse.

Terrapins and water turtles are cute but somewhat risky pets due to the Salmonella issue. They can be colonized with the organism so don't appear sick and will continue to shed the organism for years. I don't know if these warnings apply to the land based box turtles though. A call to the CDC Enteric Pathogens group in Atlanta would likely get you an authoritative answer.