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Hi there! We finished our pond just over a week ago but we don't think our RES (Yom) is yet basking. We made her this awesome cedar plank basking with coated wire for her to climb up. Is there something we can do to make this better? Something we can do to encourage her to get on it?
Or do we need to start from scratch

Any advice is welcome, please! We are open to anything, just want to make sure she CAN bask when she feel comfortable enough to do so.

jen

Some turtles are shy, expecially of new areas. You can try to get her on the side where the mesh is and see if she can climb it, also putting her on the platform. To see if she is basking when nobody is around you could put something on the platform that she would knock off when she moved on or off it.

Yea i agree, just give her time. It can take awhile for turtles to get used to a new basking area like that.

Also think about lower submerged areas which they can use are resting areas. Some driftwood might serve both purposes.

Especially when I get new turtles it takes me forever to catch them basking, they're just being shy

I love the wire idea - that's very clever. Their claws won't get stuck in something like that? I'm looking for options for my pond and I think I might need to get some wire.