While yellow is quite a vibrant color, your turtle’s shell changing from a once vibrant green, or brown, to a yellow color can be quite alarming.
Any change in color will set off alarm bells in your mind.
This article looks into why there is a yellow color change in your pet’s shell.
Table of Contents
Why is my turtle’s shell turning yellow?
It’s critical to understand the reason behind any color change in your pet turtle, a color change, to a yellow, is definitely something that will catch your eye
Here is why your pet turtle shell may be turning yellow:
Shedding:
If your turtle’s shell is turning yellow then this may be happening because the animal’s scutes are starting to shed.
Shedding happens to all turtles, when turtles shed their old scutes these old scutes start to fall off as the new ones grow and push them off. This process causes the edges of the shell to turn a translucent yellow.
You’ll see a lot of this yellowing of the shell in hatchlings but in older turtles too.
If your pet is older then shedding will become harder to do and the edges of the shell will get even more yellow looking more brighter or vibrant.
What to do:
You don’t have to worry about shedding, this is a normal process that happens in all turtles.
You can help your pet by ensuring that the animal gets foods rich in vitamin E, foods like blueberries, dark leafy greens like romaine lettuce and dandelion greens, that they get calcium from cuttlebone, and making sure that the animals get lots of UVB from their bulbs or sunshine.
Avoid trying to pull the scutes off as the animal sheds, this will be very painful for the animal. Your turtle will shed its scutes when ready
If however your turtle is older, and its scutes are harder to shed, then you can help by rubbing a toothbrush on the animal’s scutes every few days to help lift them.
It’s the type of turtle:
If you’re raising a red-eared slider, the shell of the animal is turning a bit yellow, then this is just a natural progression of the animal.
The shells of your younger red-eared sliders will be bright green when the animal is young, its shell will slowly go from green to a brownish tinge with yellow mixed in.
What to do:
If the aging is happening at the same time as the change in color then the aging is the reason for the color change.
This isn’t something to worry about and is actually perfectly normal for your pet. Your pet may simply be a morph of a red-earned slider.
“Morf” means that the animal’s shell color changed from what it was when hatching.
If you enjoyed this article then you may also be interested in other turtle/tortoise related articles. Here are some articles that you may be interested in: Why Is My Turtle’s Tank Water Red?, Why Does My Turtle Run From Me, Why Is My Yellow Belly Turtle Not Eating?, Why Is My Turtle In Its Shell?, Why Is My Turtle Standing Up?, Why Does My Turtle Look Fuzzy?, Why Is My Turtle Poop White?, Why Is My Turtle Poop Red?, Why Is My Turtle Underwater?