Greek on CL

i found a Greek tort on CL while I was searching for a Russian. Is the care for a Greek similar to that of a Russian? I have the stuff needed for Russian care but would I need new stuff for a Greek?

That's not a greek, it's a russian.

I think that's a Russian tortoise.

Thank you, I first thought Russian as well but since it has been a few years since I had Lou I was taking their word for it.

They are asking $100 for the tort and comes with light and heater as well as a glass reptile tank that is to small. 1.5ft x 3ft. The post is almost a month old so I'm hoping I can talk them down on the price.

Petsmsrt sells russians alone, without any supplies for $100, so if you have use for the supplies, it sounds like an ok deal.

Is there any difference in care between a male and a female?

I have someone else offering me a male and female pair for $150. They appear to be living together at the moment but I'm not set up to hatch and care for babies.

Apologies for the late reply. No, there is no difference between care of a male vs. care of a female. They can be treated the same. However, I will stipulate that there is one difference in the care of a mature female, and that is that you should have a laying facility for her in the event that she lays infertile eggs. This can happen, and it always helps to be prepared. So long as you have an enclosure with the capacity to contain deep substrate (which is always good to have, given that deep substrate dries out more slowly than shallow substrate), you should be fine. As for a male/female pair, if you aren't ready for babies, don't get them. It is possible that the pair is not old enough to reproduce, given the small sized animals I've seen in the wild caught trade as of late, but you never know, and if they've been kept together, eggs are certainly possible.

T.G.

I agree about ensuring a female can lay if necessary

Pairs are never recommended. Tortoises are loners that don't need, want or particularly like company. A tortoise sees another as a rival for food and space.

There is always a dominant animal and the subordinate one gets bullied physically or mentally, fails to thrive and can become very sick indeed.

Groups of three or more tortoises of the same species, of similar size and with no more than one male may succeed in a very large enclosure - at least 8'x4' per tortoise - but there are no guarantees and you should only ever keep as many tortoises as you are able to keep separately.

I know that pairing them is frowned upon by most everyone as I have one ever had one tort before it was never an opinion I could weigh in on. These two have been housed together for several years at this point and from what I've been told they get along fine. I specifically asked questions about bullying and dominant behavior. I am actually setting up a time to go and get them today.

A lot of things change when you move torts to new surroundings.

I second the advice offered above. Don't keep a single male with a single female. Things can go south very quickly under such circumstances. Aggression isn't a constant. Sometimes things seem fine, sometimes for a long time, then all of a sudden, bam. The potential for it is always there, and all it takes is one bad day and one of your animals can lose an eye or suddenly suffer a decline after sustaining so much stress. If you must get both, get a separate enclosure for both animals.

I must say that members of the genus Testudo are always rather difficult to keep in groups. Many on the forum more experienced than I have managed to do it, but I've never had such luck, unfortunately. Hermanns, Greeks, Margies, Russians, I've kept them all, and I've never been able to keep any of them together without regular incidents. I've always been one to play it safe, so I house all of my Marginated tortoises singly. Having seen the savagery of Russians, my recommendation would go double for them. Russians are particularly aggressive, and when you keep a male and female together, it is only a matter of time before you will have to house them separately anyway, and by then, something awful could transpire.

In the future, you could experiment with group dynamics, if you, say, get two or three more females, then after the quarantine, try introducing them all together in a big group. There will be some violence at first as the animals establish a pecking order, but if you're lucky, a group dynamic will set in and your animals will thrive as a herd. If, however, you've been the recipient of the same fortune I have, your animals will not get along and you will have to resort back to the single animal housing.

T.G.