Hermes, my approximately 4.5-year-old Hermann's tortoise, has spent the summer enjoying the 12 foot by 14 foot outdoor enclosure that I set up for him, filled with lots of green things to eat, a deep cave, and plenty of other hiding spots.
However, we've had well below freezing temperatures for the past week, and Hermes is showing absolutely zero sign that he wants to brumate (which is probably a good thing since this is his first year with us) so he has been forced to stay inside all of the time now, and he has made it very clear that he HATES going from having nearly 170 square feet of roaming area to only about 6 square feet in the Aivituvin "Large" Turtle Habitat box that he lived in with his previous owners and that came with him when I adopted him in April of this year.
I was already planning to set up something appropriate inside the house for winter, but this freezing spell came as a surprise and earlier than usual for our area, so now I need to rush to get it built.
Unfortunately, the available indoor space is very limited, so there is simply no way that I can give him a huge space to roam like I would want to, but I want to give him as much space as I can, so I've come up with a potential idea using the space that is available, that will give him about 28 square feet of floor space to wander in. That's pretty close to the 32 square feet (8'x4') that I've seen people recommend for indoor enclosures for small tortoises, so I'm hoping it will be enough to keep him happy until he can go outside again.
For a little background, the room where this will be set up can't be changed much, so I'm trying to make the best use of what is already in the room. There are two dressers (chests of drawers) that the enclosure will sit on top of as well as extending out as much as possible on one side. There is a south facing window in the room that the box will extend below and in front of to get some natural light in addition to the lighting fixtures, and I will be building a two shelf indoor greenhouse in the window frame above that portion of the box to have a place to try to keep some healthy things growing to supplement grocery store produce during the winter, and to start new plants growing in preparation for replanting the outdoor enclosure in the spring. The "shelves" in the greenhouse will be made of metal mesh cloth or chicken wire with a supporting frame so that light can pass through and also so that any water overflow from the plant pots and seed starters can drip down to the soil substrate in that section of the tortoise enclosure to help keep the humidity at healthy levels.
This is a very rough outline using Google Sketchup, so I hope it portrays the idea well enough. The front panels of each of the three sections will be hinged to swing out for easy access to the enclosure for cleaning and other maintenance. There is a solid wall border around the top of the ramp so he can't accidentally - or intentionally - jump off the top of the middle section onto the ramp and hurt himself. There will also be a side barrier on the ramp itself but it made the ramp impossible to see in the pictures when I put that barrier in, so just pretend that it's there.
Part of the side wall between the greenhouse and the middle section will be made of the same clear material (probably sheet acrylic plastic, or whatever I can find) as the front panels to let some of the light from the window in to also supplement the light fixtures. The top, right, and front walls will be something opaque like greenhouse corrugated plastic to keep the light, heat, and humidity inside the greenhouse where it should be. I just made them transparent in the model to make it easier to see the inside.
I plan to have the substrate about four inches deep across both bottom sections so he will have plenty to dig in but will still be able to walk through the arch that separates the greenhouse from the rest of the enclosure. I'll either have a fairly thin layer of substrate on the top floors for walking on but not really deep enough to dig in since it would just slide down the ramp, or else a reptile carpet or something similar covering the floor so he can still have something comfortable to walk on without kicking everything down the ramp.
One of the things I am not sure about is if I need to add any extra lighting or heat source to the bottom part of the dual layer middle section since the light from the heat lamp and UVB fixture won't really reach into that part of the enclosure, or just have that whole section be a dark "hide". I'm also debating whether to use open mesh for the entire "roof" of the middle section to allow the UV light to fill the whole area, or to only have a strip in the center open for the light and the rest closed off to reduce airflow and humidity loss. Even with the temperatures well below freezing outside, the area directly in front of the greenhouse window is quite warm and very bright so it will be good for the plants and provide a warm space for him to hang out if he doesn't want to climb up to where the heat lamp is on the left side.
I think I'll probably get rid of (or chop up) the front wall of the gray Aivituvin box and make it match the rest of the enclosure with the top half as a window instead of just that small rectangle window that the box has now.
I suspect that the angle of the ramp might need to be adjusted. At the angle in the picture, I know he won't have any trouble going up, but I'm concerned that it is too steep for him to go down safely, so I plan to make the actual ramp piece first and cover it with a good texture that he can grip easily (fake "grass" carpet designed for reptile enclosures, for example) and set up a test area where I can put the ramp at various angles to see how well Hermes can climb it (or not) and to find an angle that works well for him so that he will actually make use of it, and then build the middle box and the opening to the second floor with that ramp angle in mind.
The enclosure cannot extend out any farther from the wall (towards us in the first picture) so the 2 feet/24 inches of depth I'm using in this model is the limit, and it also cannot go any farther to the left or the right. However, if I want to go nuts a bit and give him more space, I can add another layer above the two left sections, but that would put him high enough that he can't really be seen from the floor, and would require a ladder to access those areas for cleaning and maintenance, so I don't think I want to do that unless he still isn't happy with this amount of space. I could also drop down for another layer on the far right side below the greenhouse, but again I'm not sure I want to do that because that section is intended to be sealed and waterproof to catch the drippings from the greenhouse.
I'd appreciate any suggestions that you can think of to tweak or improve my first draft such as positioning of the ramp or the lights or anything else.
However, we've had well below freezing temperatures for the past week, and Hermes is showing absolutely zero sign that he wants to brumate (which is probably a good thing since this is his first year with us) so he has been forced to stay inside all of the time now, and he has made it very clear that he HATES going from having nearly 170 square feet of roaming area to only about 6 square feet in the Aivituvin "Large" Turtle Habitat box that he lived in with his previous owners and that came with him when I adopted him in April of this year.
I was already planning to set up something appropriate inside the house for winter, but this freezing spell came as a surprise and earlier than usual for our area, so now I need to rush to get it built.
Unfortunately, the available indoor space is very limited, so there is simply no way that I can give him a huge space to roam like I would want to, but I want to give him as much space as I can, so I've come up with a potential idea using the space that is available, that will give him about 28 square feet of floor space to wander in. That's pretty close to the 32 square feet (8'x4') that I've seen people recommend for indoor enclosures for small tortoises, so I'm hoping it will be enough to keep him happy until he can go outside again.
For a little background, the room where this will be set up can't be changed much, so I'm trying to make the best use of what is already in the room. There are two dressers (chests of drawers) that the enclosure will sit on top of as well as extending out as much as possible on one side. There is a south facing window in the room that the box will extend below and in front of to get some natural light in addition to the lighting fixtures, and I will be building a two shelf indoor greenhouse in the window frame above that portion of the box to have a place to try to keep some healthy things growing to supplement grocery store produce during the winter, and to start new plants growing in preparation for replanting the outdoor enclosure in the spring. The "shelves" in the greenhouse will be made of metal mesh cloth or chicken wire with a supporting frame so that light can pass through and also so that any water overflow from the plant pots and seed starters can drip down to the soil substrate in that section of the tortoise enclosure to help keep the humidity at healthy levels.
This is a very rough outline using Google Sketchup, so I hope it portrays the idea well enough. The front panels of each of the three sections will be hinged to swing out for easy access to the enclosure for cleaning and other maintenance. There is a solid wall border around the top of the ramp so he can't accidentally - or intentionally - jump off the top of the middle section onto the ramp and hurt himself. There will also be a side barrier on the ramp itself but it made the ramp impossible to see in the pictures when I put that barrier in, so just pretend that it's there.
Part of the side wall between the greenhouse and the middle section will be made of the same clear material (probably sheet acrylic plastic, or whatever I can find) as the front panels to let some of the light from the window in to also supplement the light fixtures. The top, right, and front walls will be something opaque like greenhouse corrugated plastic to keep the light, heat, and humidity inside the greenhouse where it should be. I just made them transparent in the model to make it easier to see the inside.
I plan to have the substrate about four inches deep across both bottom sections so he will have plenty to dig in but will still be able to walk through the arch that separates the greenhouse from the rest of the enclosure. I'll either have a fairly thin layer of substrate on the top floors for walking on but not really deep enough to dig in since it would just slide down the ramp, or else a reptile carpet or something similar covering the floor so he can still have something comfortable to walk on without kicking everything down the ramp.
One of the things I am not sure about is if I need to add any extra lighting or heat source to the bottom part of the dual layer middle section since the light from the heat lamp and UVB fixture won't really reach into that part of the enclosure, or just have that whole section be a dark "hide". I'm also debating whether to use open mesh for the entire "roof" of the middle section to allow the UV light to fill the whole area, or to only have a strip in the center open for the light and the rest closed off to reduce airflow and humidity loss. Even with the temperatures well below freezing outside, the area directly in front of the greenhouse window is quite warm and very bright so it will be good for the plants and provide a warm space for him to hang out if he doesn't want to climb up to where the heat lamp is on the left side.
I think I'll probably get rid of (or chop up) the front wall of the gray Aivituvin box and make it match the rest of the enclosure with the top half as a window instead of just that small rectangle window that the box has now.
I suspect that the angle of the ramp might need to be adjusted. At the angle in the picture, I know he won't have any trouble going up, but I'm concerned that it is too steep for him to go down safely, so I plan to make the actual ramp piece first and cover it with a good texture that he can grip easily (fake "grass" carpet designed for reptile enclosures, for example) and set up a test area where I can put the ramp at various angles to see how well Hermes can climb it (or not) and to find an angle that works well for him so that he will actually make use of it, and then build the middle box and the opening to the second floor with that ramp angle in mind.
The enclosure cannot extend out any farther from the wall (towards us in the first picture) so the 2 feet/24 inches of depth I'm using in this model is the limit, and it also cannot go any farther to the left or the right. However, if I want to go nuts a bit and give him more space, I can add another layer above the two left sections, but that would put him high enough that he can't really be seen from the floor, and would require a ladder to access those areas for cleaning and maintenance, so I don't think I want to do that unless he still isn't happy with this amount of space. I could also drop down for another layer on the far right side below the greenhouse, but again I'm not sure I want to do that because that section is intended to be sealed and waterproof to catch the drippings from the greenhouse.
I'd appreciate any suggestions that you can think of to tweak or improve my first draft such as positioning of the ramp or the lights or anything else.
