Rachaelxxx
New Member
Hi there, just wanted to introduce myself!
I recently adopted a 9 year old female tortoise named Marcia. She was in really bad conditions before I took her and lived in a wooden box with no substrate or hide, the UVA light was rarely even turned on, she was very infrequently bathed and she wasn't fed very often. It took me a long time to convince my parents to let me adopt her because we don't have much space but now that she's here, we all love her.
Because of the dire conditions she lived in before, we want to make sure she has the best life possible. Marcia now has a much bigger enclosure inside (it's too cold and wet in Glasgow to let her outside frequently) and we use bark and hay (in her hide) as her substrate. We have a UVA light for her to bask which we turn on from 9am till 7pm and we also have a UVB light. We have tried to feed her healthily but whenever we do, she doesn't touch the food we leave out. In her old home, she was only fed things like carrots and broccoli with some occasional rocket so she's used to this and is very fussy as a result. We don't want to starve her but we were wondering if you had any solutions to help her eat a little better?
We are very lucky as Marcia doesn't seem particularly damaged from her old home (she was only there for around 3 months) and she's very confident and bold and will allow others to touch and pet her. She particularly loves being hand fed though she can bite occasionally.
I still don't know much about tortoises and wouldn't have adopted one if I didn't see how badly she was living before. But now we have her, we love her and just want to look after her to the best of our ability.
Any advice would be wonderful!
With love from Glasgow x
I recently adopted a 9 year old female tortoise named Marcia. She was in really bad conditions before I took her and lived in a wooden box with no substrate or hide, the UVA light was rarely even turned on, she was very infrequently bathed and she wasn't fed very often. It took me a long time to convince my parents to let me adopt her because we don't have much space but now that she's here, we all love her.
Because of the dire conditions she lived in before, we want to make sure she has the best life possible. Marcia now has a much bigger enclosure inside (it's too cold and wet in Glasgow to let her outside frequently) and we use bark and hay (in her hide) as her substrate. We have a UVA light for her to bask which we turn on from 9am till 7pm and we also have a UVB light. We have tried to feed her healthily but whenever we do, she doesn't touch the food we leave out. In her old home, she was only fed things like carrots and broccoli with some occasional rocket so she's used to this and is very fussy as a result. We don't want to starve her but we were wondering if you had any solutions to help her eat a little better?
We are very lucky as Marcia doesn't seem particularly damaged from her old home (she was only there for around 3 months) and she's very confident and bold and will allow others to touch and pet her. She particularly loves being hand fed though she can bite occasionally.
I still don't know much about tortoises and wouldn't have adopted one if I didn't see how badly she was living before. But now we have her, we love her and just want to look after her to the best of our ability.
Any advice would be wonderful!
With love from Glasgow x
