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We’ve found the dude’s owner! He escaped from someone a few doors down from my friend’s, maybe under the fence of the backyard. My friend has walked him over, and hopefully he’s now safe at home. He looked no worse for wear at drop-off, besides being nervous and probably a little hungry, as he...

Nobody from my friend’s community has stepped up to claim the tortoise, even after we’ve emailed everyone we could. How can we expand our search scope, and when should we call it in?

My friend lives in Altadena, on the hills. Thank you so much! I’ll forward the post to my friend.

Hello! My friend called me today to say she’d found a tortoise crossing the road in her highly-developed, gated community. For the moment, she’s keeping the guy in a large cardboard box with water and paper towels as a substrate (she has no reptiles herself, so we’re doing our best). He’s about...

Update: the little dude’s shell is SUPER soft. I noticed it when I picked them up while transferring them to the terrarium, but I looked at their plastron just now and it’s literally flexing when they breathe. Man’s got a serious calcium deficiency, I believe. How can we solve this? They really...

Hello, everybody! After a wacky January clutch, we weren’t sure that even the one egg that chalked would make it. But after a way longer time than we thought, one of them hatched! I only found this out after I went to throw the eggs out (I’m a terrible tortoise mom, I know), so I’m not sure how...

They usually live together, but we have ways to separate them into different sections of the enclosure and Crystal always goes to a separate enclosure to lay her eggs in peace.

I added only a tiny bit of water to the vermiculite, and it's mostly dry. Think the texture of the sand the waves just barely touched at the beach. The cups we put the eggs in are sitting in a large Tupperware full of water. Let's hope these little guys hatch!

So we don't have a record of his hatchday; that makes things a bit complicated.

Our female Russian, Crystal, tired out the day after laying a rare winter clutch. Let's hope they hatch!

I heard a Russian's lifespan is like 60-80, how old is this guy?

Incubating two of my female Russian's eggs in a rare winter clutch!

Hello, everyone! Yesterday our female Russian tortoise, Crystal, laid two eggs, and we're wondering how much of a chance these ones have, especially considering they were laid in winter. We're following the advice we got after our first clutch failed, including more water in the incubator to...

Aw, thanks! Yeah, I think the little boy is trying to make up for his smallness by being more aggressive. Just make sure they don't hurt each other too badly, and separate them if the fighting gets too crazy. (Our torts live in one enclosure, but it has two rooms, so I put Prism in the other...

Oh, boy. I heard they fight a lot, but maybe that's only when there's a girl around to fight over. Unfortunately at this point, you'll have to get at least two females to start breeding, since if there's only one your boys will fight and the girl will be freaking out all the time, which is good...

Yeah, it's cool how there's bands of light and dark. My tortoises are polar opposites in that way.

Oh wow, I get why his name is Duckster now! Is that just how his beak grew in when he was born, or is that a result of not clipping it?

he screm

She's had four so far, one might've had twins but unfortunately that and another one were infertile. The other two are really behind developmentally but seem to have chalked, so we're still waiting on those. And yeah, especially with younger tortoises, determining the sex of a tortoise can be...

Ummmm…this tortoise has laid eggs. I have posts, on this site, about this tortoise’s eggs. I’ve heard that in many places, but I’m pretty sure it’s a secondary indicator to tail size and shape, as well as the size of male and female tortoises of about the same age (my girl and boy are only about...