New baby Greek in Ä°stanbul

[bedia]

Hi, Ä° have 4 Greeks of various ages living in a walled garden. We have very wild garden of about 1 acre in Ä°stanbul where tortoises Ä° saved from petshops and road accidents live. They are totally free to as they please and because it's their natural habitat Ä° don't know what they do really.
3 weeks ago, just when the weather had started to change ang the big ones have dissapeared (hibernate a presume) we found a hatchling on the tiny bit of lawn we have. He/she weighed 26 grams and was very weak. We had no idea our torts were reproducing!!??
Now, this little guy is 34 grams and is warm and seems to be doing fine. Ä° feed him with weeds i collect from the garden and he eats as much as he likes. We live in Ä°stanbul so this actually is their natural habitat and i try to give him only whats in season in the garden.
Ä° did not do this before so Ä° am worried about his growth rate and if Ä° should let him free in the garden. Crows and seaguls are bad here and they even attack kittens so Ä° am worried. Any ideas are welcome. Thank you!

 

[Yvonne G]

Hi Bedia, and welcome!!

How lucky you are. I wish I could ever find a tortoise, baby or otherwise.

Did you give the wild garden a really good look to see if you can find more babies. There are probably 4 or 5 more out there, and you're right to be concerned about the birds.

I'm assuming you have the baby in the house now. He'll need a light that gives him UVB like he would be getting from the sun, a heat source, a couple of hiding places, a waterer and a feeding station. You can just use a really large plastic tub for his habitat.

I tried to look up "tortoises native to Istanbul" but none of the responses had anything to do with tortoises (but your country is beautiful!!), so I'm just having to guess that your tortoises are in the graeca species??? We don't have a Greek tortoise care sheet, but I think the care is very similar to that of a Russian tortoise. Here's a link to our care sheet on them:

http://www.tortoiseforum.org/thread-80698.html