Tortoise keeping

Northam Saint

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Anyone else have a Tortoise ?

We have adopted one this week. It’sa Hermanns two week old hatchling, so as small as a 50p. Fascinating little thing, they build up some speed! It won’t hibernate for a few years and needs to be kept in a tortoise table with a heat source, typically a reptile bulb giving off uva & uvb. Feeding wise it’s weeds, rose petals, Fuschia flowers, lettuce etc. Ours seems to like mint leaves.

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Ours is the one in the foreground.
 

TobyC

Patriot
Looks like you're doing well. Lettuce doesn't have a lot of "food" in it, mostly water, make sure you offer a variety of foods. Fruit is good also, but you may wan't to avoid strong citrus stuff, go with strawberries, blackberries, banana, and cooked butternut squash.
 

MPH

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So cute. I have ALWAYS wanted a tortoise. My family had one when i was young and I've always loved them. Nowadays they seem so expensive to buy, I'll never have one. Please do keep us updated! :)
 

Northam Saint

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Looks like you're doing well. Lettuce doesn't have a lot of "food" in it, mostly water, make sure you offer a variety of foods. Fruit is good also, but you may wan't to avoid strong citrus stuff, go with strawberries, blackberries, banana, and cooked butternut squash.
Being new to owning one we have read up a bit and it’s easy to look up new things. We also have an app which is very good. You look it up and it gives you a red, amber and green. We have dried weeds & flowers and fruit pellets. There are certain lettuce she can’t eat and it’s the more watery ones that you avoid. A bag of mixed lettuce leaves lasts around a week. She also has some calcium carbonate supplement.
Best thing we got her ? A terracotta flower pot ! I cracked it in half and we half bury it, it makes a lovely safe hiding place for her to sleep.
 

TobyC

Patriot
Being new to owning one we have read up a bit and it’s easy to look up new things. We also have an app which is very good. You look it up and it gives you a red, amber and green. We have dried weeds & flowers and fruit pellets. There are certain lettuce she can’t eat and it’s the more watery ones that you avoid. A bag of mixed lettuce leaves lasts around a week. She also has some calcium carbonate supplement.
Best thing we got her ? A terracotta flower pot ! I cracked it in half and we half bury it, it makes a lovely safe hiding place for her to sleep.
Cool, yes they go in and usually turn around to face out.
 

Northam Saint

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Cool, yes they go in and usually turn around to face out.
She does however still bury herself in the coconut “soil”, they are really good at digging. in fact the other day we could see a tortoise sized mount of earth trail from one side of her box to the other. She had dug down and kept going.
 

Northam Saint

Forum GOD!
So cute. I have ALWAYS wanted a tortoise. My family had one when i was young and I've always loved them. Nowadays they seem so expensive to buy, I'll never have one. Please do keep us updated! :)
So did I. Mine came for free ! Our neighbour is a nurse at the local vets. A customer has eleven fully grown, a pair mated and she didn’t have an incubator so took the eggs to the vets. They popped them in one and then needed homes. No cash was exchanged as this could of been illegal.
 

Northam Saint

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Silly question but do you need a permit to keep a Tortoise?
There are laws around tortoises, licence wise we don’t need one as it was given as a gift. But to sell/buy one is a different matter completely. They are endangered in the wild and can’t be collected, breeders need various paperwork. Also when Esi’s plastron the shell on the underside gets bigger than 60mm she should be micro chipped. Sadly if the vet hadn’t taken in the eggs they would of all died as the woman who handed the eggs in had no way to incubate and eleven of them hatched out.
 

Rufusdog

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Nice. When I was growing up we had an adult tortoise living in our garden. He/she (we never did determine the sex) was a solitary bugger and would disappear for weeks on end and then reappear for several days. We’d leave food out which was always eaten, but we’d never see the tortoise actually eating it. Nevertheless, he/she looked healthy and vibrant whenever we saw her/him. We don’t know where he/she came from nor what happened to her/him after we moved. Early on we had decided not to domesticate the bugger since he/she appeared to be flourishing in the wild and our gardens were more than big enough to accommodate him/her.
 

Crossroads

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When I was a nipper we used to live in an MOD house just outside the wire of Heathrow Airport ( Now where Terminal 5 is). We had a hundred yards or so of long grass as a back garden and our Tortoise (Rocket) took off into the grass for about 4 years before he came back!

As kids, we used to pick mushrooms on the airfield, we had a flower filled cottage garden at the front, like living in the countryside. Funny to think of people queuing with suitcases in our old front garden.
 
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Northam Saint

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Esi is doing well. Weighing in now at 39g and about right on the Jackson Ratio. No signs of any Pyramiding on her shell showing her growth and weight ratios are good. Going to sound mad but she seems to look for us, odd for something that fits in the palm of your hand.
 
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