Newbie here with Sulcata

Donutsgranny

Member
Joined
Oct 9, 2019
Messages
28
Location (City and/or State)
Louisiana
Actually, that's not too bad. Compared to the blades of grass, he looks much smaller. He is about half-way grown. They are not like fish, they don't grow to the space they're in. They are eating machines though, so you may not be feeding him enough? Once he gets used to being outside, he should graze all day, every day, and if there's not lots of grass, then you should also give him hay. Keep in mind that he will much prefer treats (just like a child) over a healthy diet, and they can be stubborn about it. So try feeding the hay in the morning, and maybe a bit of treat in mid afternoon? My new baby is currently 45 grams, up from 35 at birth, and he's 6 weeks old. He eats a huge pile of food every day. I make sure that he has enough so that there is always some food left in his dish every night. If he's cleaning his plate, then I up what he gets each day.

Donut is old enough that you should be able to tell what sex he/she is. If you take a couple of pictures from the ground level of his face and shell, and flip him over for a few seconds and a picture of his plastron (tummy!), then we can help you figure that out. Girls usually tend to be smaller than boys.

When you're putting together the outside enclosure, keep in mind that they are great diggers and great escape artists. And they move quickly when they want to. We used a trencher to dig a trench as deep as the trencher would go (ended up being about 18 inches), then filled the trench with Quikcrete, poured and worked in the water, and used that as our foundation for a cemented block wall for our torts. Several of my neighbor's have reported their tort missing, but ours have never gotten out. Andi (female) was hatched in Aug 2003, Joey (male) in Aug 2004 and I was told that Bolt (male) who we adopted at 1 year was hatched in Florida in July 2008. Jackson Storm Lightning (TBD, but I'm hoping female) was hatched 8/29/2019, (my great-grandson named him - you might guess he's a Disney's Cars fan!)

I will admit to probably going overboard when we moved them outside about 2008. They have an insulated house with thermopane windows, two ceramic heaters controlled by thermostats and plastic freezer flaps on their doors. The roof opens for cleaning, but is quite heavy, so it has Camaro hatch hydraulics. The walls are 3 cement blocks high, and around that we have a wire fence (4" square) to keep the dogs and coyotes out, and for a long time we had the wire fence fully covered with bird netting until all got too big for the local birds to pick up. We are planning on adding to their space over the winter wile it's not too hot to work outside. We also have our lawn area between the house and the pool closed in with 18" wrought iron fencing custom built so that the slats are about 1 1/2 inches apart so they can come in and mow. My friend's tell me they want to come back as one of my pets when they die. Thankfully I have a very talented son who can make almost anything!
Well sorry I have been missing just too much going on lately. This is a photo of Donut that you asked for.

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Donutsgranny

Member
Joined
Oct 9, 2019
Messages
28
Location (City and/or State)
Louisiana
While I am not sure I think donut may be a girl, tail is short. Donut has grown quite a bit over the winter, we need to make enclose a bit higher and I'm going to have to nail the boards to stronger posts. Also plan to build a new tort house over the summer months.
 

Donna Albu

Active Member
5 Year Member
Joined
May 15, 2014
Messages
123
Location (City and/or State)
Peoria, Maricopa County, AZ
While I am not sure I think donut may be a girl, tail is short. Donut has grown quite a bit over the winter, we need to make enclose a bit higher and I'm going to have to nail the boards to stronger posts. Also plan to build a new tort house over the summer months.
Pretty sure Donut is male. Nice looking tortoise!
 
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