I am thinking of buying a young horsfield they are under a year old currently being sold at my local reptile shop and i've brought loads of herps off them and they have all turnt out to be very healthy etc. I was just wondering if I have a horsfield thats about 3-4 inches in size roughly, what should I house it in and how long would it be able to stay in that sort of housing until it needs something bigger? Thanks.
Horsfield housing
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Maggie Cummings
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You could keep it in a Rubbermaid tub. They don't grow very fast or very big so it probably could stay in it for a long time. Or you could go to a junk shop or the Goodwill store and buy a bookcase and take out the shelves and staple a shower curtain liner in it and you'd have a ready made tort table..
I have a 2' X 3' under the bed rubbermaid tub for my russian, which I got a little over a month ago, and I already want to upgrade it! He will only be in the rubbermaid tub for a couple more months until we get our new place and can afford to build him a proper tort table. In the meantime I try to keep it interesting for him and am using this time to find out what Ernie likes best. There isn't really a time period until you will "need" a tort table. Of course he would be happier in a tort table though =]
The more room that you provide for your tortoise, the happier he/she will be. Make sure that you add lots of plants, obstacles, and hides. We built our first table enclosure about 6 months after we got our first tortoise.
In my opinion, Russians should only be kept in the house as a temporary measure. Instead of thinking long-term how large your habitat indoors should be, you should be thinking about how you can build an outdoor habitat to house your Russian.
Russians do a lot of walking, so the bigger you can make his indoor habitat, the better it will be for the tortoise. A Christmas tree storage bin is a good size. I really like the size of the under-the-bed storage units, however the sides are so low that a really inventive Russian will be able to climb out in no time. Just remember: bigger is better, so get the largest thing you can afford.
Yvonne
(by "largest" I mean, the one with the most floor space, not the one with the highest sides.)
Russians do a lot of walking, so the bigger you can make his indoor habitat, the better it will be for the tortoise. A Christmas tree storage bin is a good size. I really like the size of the under-the-bed storage units, however the sides are so low that a really inventive Russian will be able to climb out in no time. Just remember: bigger is better, so get the largest thing you can afford.
Yvonne
(by "largest" I mean, the one with the most floor space, not the one with the highest sides.)
Torts said:
Great advice!
emysemys said:
I agree! (dang this was easy, everybody else gave my thoughts already!)
I would just go as big, as I could to start with. It saves time, trouble, and expense to just go for as big as possible to start with. The plastic tree storage is great if you want to get the tortoise now and be slowly working on his future home.
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For more ideas and photos, check out this site: http://russiantortoise.org/care_sheet.htm. I just put together the rubbermaid set up just like this site suggests and I think it will be a great place for Crash during the winter, otherwise, he'll be outdoors weather and temps permitting. My outdoor enclosure is an old and very large chain link kennel that I've used to plant tortoise grazing seeds for my Leopards, but I will be "Russian-izing" it soon for Crash.
I don't know why Sandy's link doesn't work, but if you go to http://russiantortoise.org/
then click on "care sheet" it takes you to what she's talking about.
Yvonne
then click on "care sheet" it takes you to what she's talking about.
Yvonne
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