He's in China.
Need help for sulcata
- Thread starter clive168
- Start date
Ahh. I missed that detail.
In any case, with a collection of this magnitude and value any animals that die should be immediately sent for necropsy to determine cause of death, and strict quarantine procedures should implemented until the results are received.
I really can't help you with your breeding question, but my gut feeling is that your tortoise yards are too crowded. A female tortoise likes to dig a nest in private to assure the safety of the eggs.
Ok i will enlarge the farm for my torts。
Actually, your tortoise farm looks like a beautiful place. I love the ponds you've made for them. I can only guess, but I'm thinking that you just have too many animals. I don't know for sure, but common sense is telling me that nature tells these tortoises their world has enough tortoises in it, so they don't breed, lay eggs and bring more into their over crowded world. Maybe if you could set up space for one male and several females you would have better breeding success.
I think so too， and will set for this at summer
I'm so glad you've joined our Forum. This is educational for us as well as for you. See, I had this picture in my mind of an over-populated, high-rise buildings, busy streets China. And now you've given me a whole different view of the country.
The buildings you've made for your animals, and the yards with the cement ponds are great habitats. Just work on separating the species, making smaller breeding groups and I think you've got a pretty darned good thing going there!
The buildings you've made for your animals, and the yards with the cement ponds are great habitats. Just work on separating the species, making smaller breeding groups and I think you've got a pretty darned good thing going there!
May I ask, why are you wanting to breed so many sulcata . Is there a big demand in the pet trade over there.
Hi clive168
How long have you had your Sulcata? There shells look really good. Are they wild caught? What diet do you feed them on?
How long have you had your Sulcata? There shells look really good. Are they wild caught? What diet do you feed them on?
Yes, I meant to mention that too. Those tortoises look great!
M
Maggie Cummings
Guest
Stop feeding fruit to the Sulcata....not good for them
I am just a people who crazy for torts and I breed sulcata over eight yrs, but just a couple number, those big sulcata came to our farm just six months , this is my first time to have such a lot of torts , so we build a farm for them hope they have happy life. They came from wild ,
Food always high fiber and Napier grass ,black grass , vegetable , very little fruit , and
over 10 kinds of grass all suitable for animals with no posion.
Cuttlefish and Oxytetracycline provide sometime.
70% grass 25%vegetable 5% fruit and others
And we also accepting the abandoned torts at our province. Cos such species can't alive at wild here. So we need more help and advices for them to make them healthy . Sometime when they got sick I need to do some medical care for them , but I only can do a little .
make sure to quarantine new tortoises from your other tortoises for at least 3 months to prevent the spread of disease.
Hello Clive. I see several things that I would do differently. I will just give them to you one by one and you can use what you like.
1. I don't know what type of grass that is, but those pieces are much too long. Strands of that length can wreak havoc on their intestines and can block them up if they get stuck. I use scissors and try to keep the length of grass pieces to around 10 cm, especially when its larger, older more mature and fibrous grass pieces like that.
2. You need some sort of tray to feed them on. Feeding them on that sand gravelly dirt is not good. They can ingest that stuff and get blocked up.
3. Fruit trees are not the best for tortoise pens. The leaves are sometimes toxic and the fruit that is dropped is not good for them. I would replace those with fruitless mulberry trees.
4. I would not give them antibiotics for no good reason. That can ruin their intestinal flora and fauna.
5. They need a lot more "furniture" in their enclosures. Logs, boulders, bushes, etc...
6. Ideally, you should have just one male in each of those large enclosures. Mild mannered males will be fine with two females. More aggressive breeding males might need to be housed with 3-4 females. You can attempt to house the remaining males as a bachelor herd away from all the females, but be prepared to separate them if need be. Doing this will greatly lower the stress level and should increase health and reproduction. I think you need at least 30-40 enclosures to house all the tortoises in your pictures.
7. Wild caught tortoise frequently come in with all sorts of parasites and pathogens. This could be the cause of your deaths. A hampered immune system cause by all the stress would make it worse.
8. Species should NEVER be mixed. This might also be the cause of death, and might lead to lots more deaths in the coming months. It would take too much time tonight for me to type up a whole quarantine protocol for you, but basically, stop mixing species, and keep individuals of the same species housed in smaller groups with no contact with each other.
9. Those pools look nice, but unsealed concrete can leach bad chemicals into the water. Can you have the water tested to eliminate this as a possible cause of problems?
10. During winter, I would keep the tortoise houses warmer. Try for 29-30C all day and night and make sure the floor is at least that temperature. 23-28C is fine for summer time when the days are hotter.
These might offer some ideas:
http://www.tortoiseforum.org/threads/enclosure-expansion.38788/
http://www.tortoiseforum.org/threads/sulcata-burrows.50846/
http://www.tortoiseforum.org/threads/how-to-raise-a-healthy-sulcata-or-leopard-version-2-0.79895/
http://www.tortoiseforum.org/threads/beginner-mistakes.45180/
http://www.tortoiseforum.org/threads/for-those-who-have-a-young-sulcata.76744/
Please come back and ask lots of questions if any of this is not clear to you. I'm happy to try to explain it more. I wish I was fluent in Chinese. Maybe we can find someone to translate? I would like to understand your first paragraph of the first post in this thread better.
1. I don't know what type of grass that is, but those pieces are much too long. Strands of that length can wreak havoc on their intestines and can block them up if they get stuck. I use scissors and try to keep the length of grass pieces to around 10 cm, especially when its larger, older more mature and fibrous grass pieces like that.
2. You need some sort of tray to feed them on. Feeding them on that sand gravelly dirt is not good. They can ingest that stuff and get blocked up.
3. Fruit trees are not the best for tortoise pens. The leaves are sometimes toxic and the fruit that is dropped is not good for them. I would replace those with fruitless mulberry trees.
4. I would not give them antibiotics for no good reason. That can ruin their intestinal flora and fauna.
5. They need a lot more "furniture" in their enclosures. Logs, boulders, bushes, etc...
6. Ideally, you should have just one male in each of those large enclosures. Mild mannered males will be fine with two females. More aggressive breeding males might need to be housed with 3-4 females. You can attempt to house the remaining males as a bachelor herd away from all the females, but be prepared to separate them if need be. Doing this will greatly lower the stress level and should increase health and reproduction. I think you need at least 30-40 enclosures to house all the tortoises in your pictures.
7. Wild caught tortoise frequently come in with all sorts of parasites and pathogens. This could be the cause of your deaths. A hampered immune system cause by all the stress would make it worse.
8. Species should NEVER be mixed. This might also be the cause of death, and might lead to lots more deaths in the coming months. It would take too much time tonight for me to type up a whole quarantine protocol for you, but basically, stop mixing species, and keep individuals of the same species housed in smaller groups with no contact with each other.
9. Those pools look nice, but unsealed concrete can leach bad chemicals into the water. Can you have the water tested to eliminate this as a possible cause of problems?
10. During winter, I would keep the tortoise houses warmer. Try for 29-30C all day and night and make sure the floor is at least that temperature. 23-28C is fine for summer time when the days are hotter.
These might offer some ideas:
http://www.tortoiseforum.org/threads/enclosure-expansion.38788/
http://www.tortoiseforum.org/threads/sulcata-burrows.50846/
http://www.tortoiseforum.org/threads/how-to-raise-a-healthy-sulcata-or-leopard-version-2-0.79895/
http://www.tortoiseforum.org/threads/beginner-mistakes.45180/
http://www.tortoiseforum.org/threads/for-those-who-have-a-young-sulcata.76744/
Please come back and ask lots of questions if any of this is not clear to you. I'm happy to try to explain it more. I wish I was fluent in Chinese. Maybe we can find someone to translate? I would like to understand your first paragraph of the first post in this thread better.
Hi tom
I will do my best for your auggestions ， and can you let me know what time is the breeding season，and what should i offer for them， and i found the males tort's genital can't insert to the females and alway male to male .........
The pools have been build after use for 6 months and clean and full of water to remove the chemical toxins , do u think that is enough ?
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