Turtles: A safe or unsafe choice

[sharn]

for a daycare pet?

We currently house one red ear slider at our daycare and we are looking at making him a long term pet. However, there is a lot of articles surrounding salmonella and young children, and as this is a potentially life threatening illness we need to look into this further. We understand that most pets can potentially carry disease/illness, but we need to weigh up the likelyhood of illness vs the benefit children get from the living world. Is salmonella a very rare occurance from unsanitarily housed animals that only gets publicity due to its nature, or is this a very real possibility in our setting where children may not get to wash their hands before contact with their mouths (hands are always washed before food). The children can come into contact with the turtle either whilst I am handling it, or when he is outside in his freshly set up water trough. The children can touch him, and his water during this time, but they cannot reach his inside aquarium where he resides most of the time. This aquarium is given a 75% water change weekly.

We enjoy the turtle as a suitably housed/handled creature for our setting so it would be a shame to move him on, but if there is a risk to health from the turtle then we can find another home for him

[alanmin4304]

In a recent survey carried out over NZ with various reptiles including turtles the turtles were shown to be less infected with salmonella than many of the lizards. Down this way many native lizards are infected as are sparrows and many household pets. It may be a good lesson for the children that they should wash their hands carefully after handling pets just as they do before eating food. In over 30 years of investigating notifiable infectious diseases such as salmonellosis I have never come accross a case of salmonallosis caught from turtles. That is not to say that it is not possible or has not happened. Mine were tested and came up negative but the problem with testing them is that they can be intermittent excreters.

Thorough hand washing is the answer I think. MRSH.