ISO Female Leopard

Krazyturtlelady

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I am looking for a female leopard tortoise as a mate for my male. He is lonely and needs company. He is about 2 years old and I would like to get one about his age.
 

wellington

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Hello and Welcome. You will need at least 2 females and then your male still may need to live alone.
Tortoises don't get lonely, that's how they like it. They live alone in the wild and fight whoever invades their territory and seeks out a female only to breed and then moves on.
So if you get one female, they both will have to live by themselves the way they prefer it anyway.
 

TechnoCheese

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Your tortoise is not lonely, and does not need company. In fact, they are incapable of such emotions, and are completely solitary animals. What makes you think he’s lonely?
 

Krazyturtlelady

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So it is better to keep him alone? I do not house him with the sulcata tortoises however he shows interest in them as I do let them out together occasionally. The sulcatas are about his age.
 

tglazie

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Hi KTL,

Yes, to further elaborate on previous advice posts, your tortoise expressing interest is not necessarily indicative of a longing for companionship. The number one rule we all must acknowledge is that despite the fact that tortoises don't possess pinchers and sharp teeth that can do us bodily harm, nature has equipped them with all the tools necessary to do serious damage to both plants and one another. I don't keep leopard tortoises personally, though I do pet sit for my uncle who keeps them, and I can say that his animals do display aggression toward one another and I generally have to isolate the male from the group in his own pen. Most of the time when I am pet sitting them, I just grab George and place him in his isolation pen as a preemptive move. I do this because George is, like most tortoises, a jerk.

The species with which I am most familiar are in the Testudo genus. My first tortoise Graecus is a Southern Turkish ibera Greek tortoise who has the disposition of Jack Dempsey. He wants to bite and ram anything that even resembles a tortoise, and he is actually quite vicious about it. I've had the guy since the early nineties, and he was an old man back then, but he is still the same mean old hellbeast he's always been. Every mistake I've made keeping these animals, I made with him, including keeping other tortoises with him despite this violent streak. None of those communal living arrangements ended well.

The tortoise species that I specialize in breeding is the marginated tortoise, and I have yet to keep any two or three animals together that didn't have problems with violence. Just this past weekend, I placed all of my girls together after bath time to graze in a common grazing area that I set aside to allow the tortoises to graze. I don't generally place the males in this area unless I want to encourage combat (males who fight make better breeders; I of course referee these bouts to ensure that no one loses an eye or gets flipped over in the hot sun) or breeding, but I often place the females together for grazing after a twice weekly bath, just so I can see how they interact. Now, my biggest female, Lady Gino, is generally the big bully of the group. The others go about their business, grazing, generally ignoring one another, but Lady Gino will generally pick one animal out of the group, chase the poor girl, then mount her in a display of dominance. She will even bite them, sometimes in the face if I don't move to intercede. Generally, she is the first one to go back to her enclosure, given my impatience with unnecessary roughness. What is most fascinating is that this past weekend, Whittins, who just reached sexual maturity, started behaving in the exact same way as Lady Gino. She decided to pick on Marge, a lady who is at least a quarter larger and ten years her senior, and she started riding Marge around like it was her job. See, before this, Whittins was just another careless grazer, another of Lady Gino's random victims during the supervised group meeting. But last weekend, she showed her true colors as an aggressive beast. Now, that's just something you can't predict.

Now, I know that there are many on the forum who have kept tortoises in groups with little to no problems. But the majority of experienced keepers with whom I've spoken generally acknowledge that there are times when their animals get out of control and need to be isolated. The majority of keepers also agree that there is nothing wrong with housing a tortoise on it's own. Plenty of keepers on the forum have been single tortoise keepers for decades and had no problems stemming from their animals suffering social isolation. So, with all that info, I think the conclusion to draw from it is fairly clear. Putting your tortoise into a group is a risk. It could be a risk to your current tortoise. It could be a risk to those animals in a group to which you intend to introduce your current animal. The big question is, is that a risk you want to take? I mean, if you want to breed tortoises down the line, you will have to do introductions, but I produce dozens of hatchlings every year, and I do it by keeping the animals singly with supervised introductions so that I can completely manage and control their aggressive moves against one another.

Also, I would strongly advise against allowing your leopard to comingle with your sulcatas. Once again, it's all about risk. The disease risk may not be as great as, say, introducing a freshly imported Russian tortoise with a runny nose into a herd of radiated tortoises, but it is a disease risk nevertheless. Also, they have quite a bit of behavioral incompatibilities, with sulcatas being far bolder and more aggressive, even at a young age. Don't let them around one another, just my thoughts.

Now I'm not saying don't keep a bunch of tortoises, because saying that would be hypocritical on my part. No, keep as many of them as you can properly care for. I have seven margies, a Greek, a Hermanns, and ten radiateds in my collection, as well as an ever fluctuating number of hatchling margies. And I've been seriously considering increasing my Hermanns number to include a breeding group, but I just haven't settled on how I will go about doing this. By all means, go nuts and do your thing. Everyone here is just cautioning you on the risks of just throwing new animals into the mix, especially without a backup plan of how to successfully maintain that animal in isolation should the comingling not work.

T.G.
 

wellington

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So it is better to keep him alone? I do not house him with the sulcata tortoises however he shows interest in them as I do let them out together occasionally. The sulcatas are about his age.
Short answer is Yes, better he be alone. Also better for his well being to never let him be with the sulcata.
 

Krazyturtlelady

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Thanks for the advice. I never leave leopard alone with the sulcatas and have never let them stay together for an extended period of time due to disease risk. I never let either around my Russians. I get what you are saying about aggressive behavior. My russians are older and I aquired them separately from people who could no longer care for them. I got the male first and when I got the female a little while later he drove her crazy! I separated them and only put them together sometimes. If I decide to get a female leopard later to breed should I do the same? By the way on a totally different subject there is a pair of older sulcatas on Craigslist in Augusta Georgia that was said to have been used for "educational purposes". The ad says due to unfortunate circumstances they must get rid of hem. If anyone is interested I would love to see them go to a good home. Please pass along.
 

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