Yall, its been a minute so I thought I would give an update. After trying new things I think she was bored/depressed. We continued to take her outside and in our deck garden (always under supervision), let her walk around inside, and change the layout of her enclosure more. She has started to...
Double update day! We got the new bulb in and while I installed it, my son put our tortoise in the garden then a bath. While she was chillin in the water, we cut up some romaine, dandelion, one round of cucumber, and I minced some cactus to make it even smaller and spread it over the leaves...
Update - we keep bathing and feeding, she eats how much she wants when she wants and is still really really into sleeping.
Yesterday we let her sleep through the morning and took her outside for an hour or so in the afternoon where it was quite hot and sunny. She then had a soak and proceeded...
Well, good news and bad news. We keep giving her a bath but now that everyone is back at work its a bit shorter in the AM, with me filling up her new xl water dish and soaking her there for a bit til she decides to walk out (shell sploot for a few minutes).
We got her to eat some aloe and...
My wife gave her a bath yesterday while I was at work where she drank a lot and peed a lot. Today, in her bath, she had a decent poop so I am taking that as a small win since its been a minute. We will continue to give daily baths as suggested above and started to spray down her enclosure in the...
Were doing the best with what we have now and our enclosure looks somewhat similar to your examples. We had to make it 7' due to the size of our living space, it could not fit at 8'. We have mostly coco husk and organic topsoil that i was very anal about having no fertilizers of any type but if...
yeah, I was leaning to an xray. We dont have a reptile specific vet here but we have one who can do small animal xrays (i rescued a slider that fell off someones deck and we had to get it care and find a foster). I will try to keep the substrate wetter and spray it daily as well as soak her...
Thank you, we are using Arcadia T-5 right now and i could not remember than name for the life of me. She definitely responded to it when we change to Arcadia last year.
I have been pulling her out of her hiding holes to get her up and in the heat but today, even with the scent of cucumber to...
I will try to upload photos when I am home again (currently at work).
The enclosure ranges from 75 - 100 with that peak temp being in the direct basking light and the radiant heat around is in the 80's-90s. Its a T5 light from a german company who i can find again when home. The bulb is getting...
Our Russian tortoise did not hibernate this last winter, she wanted to at first then seemed to give up, so she has been awake through the fall and winter and now we are mid summer, she seems to want to go to sleep only. Her eating has decreased, even with her favorite foods, she walks around and...
Flexseal! It needs to be fully dry and cured before safe but with it your wood is fully water protected and the dirt will not cause damage with excess moisture either. We went most of the way up the walls with ours and it works great
Yes, the one thing I didnt say was we were leaving for vacation and had someone to watch her so I had to make a decision that someone who will come once a day to look in could also follow through with which is why I ended up getting her back awake. very stressful but stoked for this forum
Thank you Tom. it was a very stressful decision but she seems happy now and we will do more prep next year to see if she wants to go into a full brumation.
Do you think it was the correct decision in the end based on what we were seeing her do?
Jason
Sorry for my late reply. As I mentioned earlier, I have truly read every post on here about brumation, including Toms. Nothing spoke directly to the issue we were facing but it seems that our tortoise is cool with being awake now and moves around again, eats well, and sleeps at night.
Update: she was still awake and looking around today so I went ahead and put her back in the main enclosure, two water dishes, heat lamp is set to 80, rest of the enclosure is 65-75 during the day.
Gave her a soak first too and put some food in jus tin case.