Well...I have not received a reply back from my friend's brother...but she said it might be days in between him checking e-mail.
However, I did find a very detailed site on all sorts of turtles by a family who has raised them for many years. I e-mailed the writer of that site and he has messaged me back and pointed me to more specific sections of his site.
reading there, it is mixed feelings about keeping or letting go...personal choice really...they have kept them for the first year to help with survival because over the years they have found that during that first year the turtles do not "bond" and they have turned many back to the wild after seeing them through the winter.
they have also set up backyard habitats for the various turtles they raise. And again, there are detailed instructions on how to give them room to roam and grow in a safe habitat if that is what one wishes to do...after they are old enough and big enough to be outside.
So for this winter at least, I will follow his guidelines and see how it goes next summer...as to whether we give it a pond and habitat or take it to hopefully the creek...
here is the link he referred me to...and there are many others on his site as well
http://turtle_tails.tripod.com/raisingbabyturtles2/tour18.htm
and here is the e-mail I received from him
First I will assume that you identified it correctly. Most baby turtles will bury themselves and snappers will bury themselves 95% of the time when given the chance. There is nothing wrong with it, but it is not what you want. On my Raising Baby Turtles page is an article "Starting Hatchling Water Turtles" where I show how I start my babies in a simple pan of water. I have three pans each with a dozen turtles in them right now. In each pan I have a ceramic hide box which a snapper would be happy to have. In another article I show how to make hide boxes from items like ceramic bowls. This is how I would start your snapper for several months.
When you are ready to move the turtle to an aquarium, I recommend only using several inches of water like I show in many of the articles on the Raising Baby Turtles page. And after you move the baby to an aquarium, I recommend feeding it in a separate container of water rather than the aquarium.
As you have time I recommend reading ALL the articles on the Raising Baby Turtles page. There are stories about snappers mixed in. Before you build a pond for your snapper, read the articles on the Backyard Turtles page. Some snappers are excellent pets and friendly while others are not. It will be a year or two before you will know. I suggest that if you were to build a turtle pond, build it for turtles in general and not just for one snapping turtle.
As far as predators go, a fish pond will have predators and maybe more than a turtle pond. Turtles will need confined or they will walk off. But you have plenty of time to work that out.
One last thing. Your turtle will not eat veggies. It will eat commercail turtle food when it is ready to eat. I recommend Reptamin and Wardley sticks. It does not need live foods. After a few months it will like things like cooked chicken and turkey, seafoods, etc.
