Tom is much more experienced than me and most likely one of the most qualified people to respond to your post. I am a new owner ( a little over a year) but i have done alot of research and would like to add something that usually doesn't come up during these conversations.
I don't agree. As long as you offer the right foods and enough room to get exercise, your tortoise should get as much food as he can eat.
Your comment was well worded, very respectful, and obviously had good intentions. My reply will strive to achieve the same.
The ideas expressed in your post were/are common, and they are not correct. We've debated and disproven your expressed assertions many times here over the last few years. In summary, pyramiding is caused by growth in conditions that are too dry. Pyramiding is not caused by food of one type or another, food of one quantity or another, lack of sunshine, lack of calcium, lack of D3, protein, glass enclosures, or any of the other things that it is incorrectly attributed to. It is easy to see where you got that idea, and you are not alone. All the old books, experts, vets, and breeders are largely still saying this same thing, and all of the above seem like such credible sources, though they are not. In fact, I used to repeat the same sort of thing, until first hand experience proved me wrong time and time again, which is what began a decade's long tortoise adventure/obsession to discover what was really going on. The problem is that me, you, and so many others followed their advice for decades with zero success and most of us experienced 100% failure in our attempts to grow a smooth, natural looking, tortoise.
Allow me to lay out my case:
Here is one such "experiment" started back in 2010 and still going today:
- I was where you are in 1991, with my first sulcata hatchling in hand. I read the books, followed all the "expert" advice of the day and raised a very healthy, very well cared for, but pyramided, sulcata. This was very frustrating, and I couldn't understand where I went wrong. More "experts" were consulted and the general consensus was that grocery store foods were too nutritious, too high in protein, unnatural, and typically fed in quantities and frequencies that were too great. It was explained that where these desert animals occur there is little food for most of the year, and they are lucky to find and occasional tuft of dead grass to eat. "They" also all agreed and told me that raising them indoors was a contributing factor, that tortoises do better outdoors, and that sunshine and D3 would help to prevent pyramiding. Sound familiar? It was explained as a nutritional problem. This explanation made sense, but it wasn't correct. Armed with this new knowledge of where I went wrong, I went out and got two more babies to raise. They were outside in a 12x40' enclosure most of each day. They were fed sparingly, I skipped feeding days frequently, and I only fed them "natural" foods like grass and weeds. They grew very slowly. They grew so slowly that I think I stunted them. They were both male and at 10 years old they were only 30 pounds. And… they were more pyramided than the first one. No one at that time had any idea that they needed warm, damp, humid, monsoon conditions. No one seemed to understand that babies hatch at the start of the annual monsoonal rainy season. No one seemed to understand that they don't live in the desert, they live in grassland and forest edges where a lot of annual rainfall is the norm. No one seemed to understand that their first few months of life in the wild offer conditions like South Florida or New Orleans in summer with puddles, seasonal marshes and green growing food everywhere. No one seemed to understand that older, larger tortoises spend the hot dry season underground in warm, damp burrows to escape the desiccation and dehydration of the hot African sun. It would be many years before I would understand any of that too…
- What we humans in North America, and elsewhere, speculate about how they live in nature over there, has proven time and time again to be wrong, and yield poor results. The weather info we have from over there is collected by weather stations with sensors mounted at the international standard of 2 meters above ground, out in the wide open and away from any shade, vegetation, or cover. What we now know is that while wild conditions are survivable for about 1 baby in every 300-1000, wild conditions, whatever they may be, are seldom ideal. We also now know that when ideal conditions and good food are offered in our captive environments, that they do grow faster that they would under the barely survivable conditions in the wild. This is not "power growing", this is not unhealthy, this doesn't cause or contribute to pyramiding in any way. Offering the best wild conditions that they might see, while offering a good, high fiber, high calcium, varied diet, and letting them graze freely, like a wild tortoise would, is not a bad thing. Quite the opposite.
- I've done many individual experiments, as well as side-by-side experiments over almost a decade now to prove what I'm saying here, and disprove the incorrect info that you are parroting here in this thread. Please don't take that as an insult. I used to parrot the same wrong info too, and I feel it is safe to assume that is what is happening since you have one year with one tortoise to base your assertions on. Its only logical to assume that you've read that info, or been told that info from some other source. Many other people all over the globe have repeated and are repeating my same experiments and they are universally getting the same results.
https://tortoiseforum.org/threads/the-end-of-pyramiding.15137/
I hope you'll consider all of this and come back with questions and conversation. Feel free to ask for more evidence and make me explain and prove my points.
And welcome to the forum.
In the “ winter “ months his hide box is heated to 85f & has a water pan in it to provide more humidity + for the 1st yr I had him - soaked almost daily.
i
I don`t agree with your thoughts about tortoises diet and pyramiding.
In previous comments Tom already explained how my information was from old and misleading sources, and after doing more reasurch I agreed with him. Thank you for trying to give proper information though.
PyramiDUNG? Bee I believe you have made a hilarious typo[emoji28]
