I think it depends on the Tortoise. My friend's tortoise lives out in the garden all year round and usually brumates herself for close to 6 months. She will stop eating of her own accord and dig down. My friends usually then play hunt the dig spot and cover it with some protection to stop any...
As we already have ponds in the garden and the enclosure is right next to one, I thought it would be nice to take water from my pond waterfall into the enclosure. I used a piece of guttering to go through the chickenwire to make a drainage for the pond and filled it full of large pebbles so that...
Looking at your pictures, you already have internal posts that a frame could rest on. You just need to take off the depth of the wooden frame so all the posts are at the same level, then a frame will fit nicely inside the walls, and unless foxes develop opposable thumbs, it'll be animal proof...
It was a bog standard one from Amazon
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004NCY5LG/?tag=
It actually works pretty well. I screwed the base of it to garden grade 2x4 to raise it up a bit and left a nice gap at the front as an entrance.
Mine is just a series of square wooden frames, using flat...
Your second thing to consider is that that enclosure is only going to last a couple of years more at best. Then you will need more room (at least double). I have Testudo Gracea (Spur thigh) which only grow a little bit bigger than Hermans (I think) Mine were born in 2020 and I moved them...
Similarly - you'll find recommendations for chickenwire, but again, it might be for different areas. Where I am, chickenwire is fine. We get the odd curious fox and cat. Where you are, I understand that you have somewhat larger animals ;-)
Edible weeds and plants are a good idea, but in my...
It's going to depend where you are in the world I think. For example, soil and grass in the UK isn't going to be a problem as the soil never dries up into dust. I suspect in your humid, hot summers, soil is going to bake out and become very dusty indeed, so loads of fine particles about. That...
That's effectively what the cold frame is. The current pen has a chickenwire lid. My challenge is to work out a way to build a removable chicken wire lid that will go around the trunk of the apple tree and around the wisteria trunk.
I think I've worked out a plan though. I'm not going to be...
The cover is to stop foxes and cats really. We get a lot of fox visitors. Theres quite a few local cats also that might have a go at a tortoise. They certainly sit on the existing netting.
HI all,
I have just finished spring cleaning my tortoise enclosure as Coco and Esio have finished brumating.
(Coco and Esio went off to hide whilst the giant was tarting up the enclosure)
Anyway, I'm moving to Tom's point of view that Coco and Esio are not sharing nicely. So with that in mind...
Well, despite fortellings of doom and gloom, both Esio and Coco have reappeared of their own accord. The smaller of the two brumated pretty much all the way from the end of October to about a week ago. The larger one only bothered with brumating from January to about a week ago.
They are both...
They are just reaching 4 years old I think. Yes, happy to post some pictures when they decide to emerge. In the meantime, here are a few from last August.
I get what you are saying, but the Tortoise that did decide to brumate has no interest in that 35 degree basking spot. She went to a place that she felt was right and dug down about a foot. She only moved in those 4 weeks because I dug her up to check on her (probably shouldn't have done that)...
Actually it isn't. You state what you think people should do, but there isn't much about *why* as far as I can see. Why isn't letting them do what they want to do, a good idea?
I didn't ask for help. I asked for opinions - usually those come with some justifications. "you are doing it wong"...
I'm not. I'm opposed to the open hostility I got for posting here.
Because you are telling me to do stuff that isn't achievable in a UK back garden and seem to have little knowledge of our climate or wildlife. Your brumation threat is great but you talk about quick sharp changes in weather. We...