Live naked people

Anyfoot

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Have you tried putting a wiggly worm 4" away. I'm curious if seeing edible live food would be enough to coax them out of hiding.
 

Yvonne G

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For the real shy ones (my experience with 'shy' is with baby box turtles) I place the food right at the mouth of the hiding place.
 

Kapidolo Farms

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@Yvonne G @Anyfoot I'll try some worms, that's an interesting idea, maybe isopods too. Come to think of it, I put isopods in there before and don't see them any more. I don't have any 'hide's' in this set-up, but many large Magnolia leaves, large enough for a small tortoise to have a choice of many places to hide. I'll wait on the worms until I have time to sit and take a picture.
 

Anyfoot

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My homes hingebacks have half the enclosure covered and half out in the open( it's all indoors). It's about 80sq ft total. This year they have opted to lay eggs in the covered half. I've left all eggs in the ground. I've noticed the half that they choose to lay eggs in is literally crawling with bugs, Isopods and god knows what other bugs that resided there. The floor is crawling with bugs
My substrate is dried leaves and an apple tree that I shredded plus some orchid bark. The same substrate throughout the 80sq ft. I know the choice to lay eggs in the covered area is riddled with bugs, have they chose that area because of the food source. Yes there are other things like lighting and temps, But is the choice because of natural food source.
Why not lay the eggs next to the food slate out in the open????
I think they live off natural bugs etc more than we think in the early days/weeks/months or even year.
My hinges love a good lively worm or a scampering isopod.
 

Kapidolo Farms

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North San Diego County (more for you than me)? Want to work with many really cool tortoises? I need help for a few days the week before the T-Day holiday - THE WEEK BEFORE. I pay pretty decent wages, even for training. please call me with your voice at 215-483-7675. After all we are going to actually spend time in the same tortoise Farm for a few training sessions, so don't be shy (NO txt or PM). Will
 

Kapidolo Farms

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Wow, I see the last post here from Grandpa turtle 144 was in early November.

Been spending much time on getting things done rather than talking about them. The https://tortoiseforum.org/threads/w...ry-and-garden-published-nutrient-list.161833/ thread is a 'doing something' thread, I am working on sorting out how much romaine or other leaf lettuce can actually work out with a continual and modest addition of other things. Garden weeds are great, but unless they are from your own yard always iffy. A close (geographical) friend reported to me losing many very long term tortoises when something shifted and an also very long term source for hibiscus was sprayed with something and the tortoises perished.

I have moved more and more to USDA certified organic. The grass pellet I use are such, and most of the produce. I eat this way too. I can tell most apples from apples that are certified just by their taste. Actual certification in and of itself is a strong indication but still no guarantee. It means the particular producer of the crop did not spray, it does little to help when the neighboring farmer does spray on a breezy day. The crops themselves are often not inspected, but rather the practices used on the farm get scrutinized.

Anyhow, I am still offering USDA certified Organic Moringa, and NON-sprayed (yet not certified) Cactus Chips. I now also have USDA certified Alfalfa pellets. Respond here on this thread in the next few days, say until the end of 2017, and I will send a small sample of the alfalfa. Private detail can be PM'ed here on TFO, but a 'hey I'd like some" here is needed for the sample.

So, no, I don't suggest that you feed Alfalfa pellets as a stand alone diet item. But mixed with grocery or garden greens to increase variety and range. So far the Egyptians and Pancakes have been most excited, feeding reaction observation (they are using their nails to write graffiti on the enclosure walls). Alfalfa in its native range is a diet item for russians BTW.
 

Kapidolo Farms

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I mentioned this a few times, here it is. A simple radiant heat source. I put a 1 x 2 foot tile up on some pices of 2 x 4. Place the heat pad on top, put two 1 x 1 tiles on top. I put the thermostat sensor on the bottom side of the 2 x 4 tile and set it for about 90F. All of 20 minutes to set up. The one already on the salad tray is telling the others that the salad in "no good" stay away. 20180108_072740.jpg
 

Anyfoot

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I mentioned this a few times, here it is. A simple radiant heat source. I put a 1 x 2 foot tile up on some pices of 2 x 4. Place the heat pad on top, put two 1 x 1 tiles on top. I put the thermostat sensor on the bottom side of the 2 x 4 tile and set it for about 90F. All of 20 minutes to set up. The one already on the salad tray is telling the others that the salad in "no good" stay away. View attachment 227305
Will, they look stunning as usual. How have you raised them. Not the diet, I understand your approach regarding diet, and one I'm going to take.
How do you provide UVB, do you provide a basking spot or just an ambient temp?
What about hydration techniques, do you rely on your very wet and humid environments, or do you soak them aswell?
 

Kapidolo Farms

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Will, they look stunning as usual. How have you raised them. Not the diet, I understand your approach regarding diet, and one I'm going to take.
How do you provide UVB, do you provide a basking spot or just an ambient temp?
What about hydration techniques, do you rely on your very wet and humid environments, or do you soak them aswell?


One of the two T5 HO tubes is a ZooMed 5.0, but as you can see it's about 8 inches away, and directly over food, the other light is BlueMax T5 HO. I do not provide a focus of heat, only ambient ranging from low of the high 70'sF to a high or 98F. There is a large shallow dish that they can use 24/7, and they do as evidenced by the constant supply of poop in the water. But I don't know they all have figured out pooping or drinking in the water so on weekends I give them a few cycles in a shallow bus tray like waiters use. One cycle is not enough, as I don't know who takes time to adjust as opposed to those who drink and poop right away, so the lagers get a second and third chance at fresh water. The enclosure floor space is 3 x 6 foot. Before winter hen the ambient was high do the climate they would be pretty dispersed in there, now they spend much time under the radiant heat area. There is also a traditional radiant heat panel at one end, which provides the gradient. It is on the wall right above the water tray, so that keeps higher humidity as a gradient to a much lesser extent than the heat. I had many small hides throughout which are much less commonly used as they get bigger, and the room ambient dropped.

I find the use of just a 25 watt CHE gives enough of a spot of heat over and above the other sources to be used in other enclosures by other species that are more or less set up the same, and I will add one to this enclosure as well. Especially when it is placed over a dark ceramic tile or slate.

All that and, about once a week weather and time permitting they are placed in the bus trays and outside for a few hours. That min temp for that activity is 60F in the the sun or 70F in the shade (cloud cover and a porch overhang as 'shade' for this purpose). I place a double board over one end of the tray for spot shade. I often also put a pile of grass in the tray and it's on a slope, so water and browse are there. They mostly sit fully exposed to the sun for a short time, then crawl under the grass, shaded or full sun. The temps and shade criteria is what we used for Galops when I was at the philly zoo. Direct sun at 60F and they would stretch out to increase surface area, at 70F they just did their 'normal' walking around. They were put in anight house daily, so outside time was a best practice when possible for other husbandry needs, like cleaning the inside enclosure..

I do this out side time for several radiated I am raising to a larger size and some Egyptians too, which have a similar set-uped enclosure. The Egyptians are not on as wet a substrate.
 

Kapidolo Farms

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Here is the label from the chicken layer food. All organic now, I stopped using the Sunfresh labelled product in preference to the all organic. Sunfresh was the vegetarian line from Purina. More and more all organic is making its way into my tortoise kitchen.20180111_053004.jpg
 

Kapidolo Farms

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2017 Kapidolo Farms conservation contributions.

$100.00 https://www.gofundme.com/save-the-albera-testudo-h-hermanni

$79.80 Direct purchase of 100 nano chips for implanting wild Indotestudo forsetnii

$100 https://experiment.com/projects/conservation-efforts-to-protect-endangered-turtles-of-sulawesi

$900 TTPG life memberships paid directly to TTPG in consideration of lower price on captive bred Manouria emys phayrei. http://www.ttpg.org/


Total: $1179.80, considerably more than my commitment to pass on the 3% saved on sales with the use of 'friends and family'. Money matters, voting with your dollars is everyday, not just in a booth during November.
 

Kapidolo Farms

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I tend to be critical of many things, it's an inward looking eye as well. There are a few web pages I have found where I close off the page dumbfounded by my critical eye getting a vacation.

Chris Leone's Hermanni page https://www.hermannihaven.com/ and the mystery person behind http://startortoises.net/ have done a great job building a coherent source of information.

Part of what makes both these pages so good is that they both stick to the facts, and explore edges of information without calling them facts. It is like hearing someone thinking out-loud and hearing their own critical thought on what they are thinking. It's a great deal of work to deal with making a web page at all. Keeping it simple and functional can be a challenge because there are many things 'bling' that can be added.

If you have not looked at these pages in awhile they deserve another look-see.
 
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