Shaif
Well-Known Member
Amazing!
If you do have time/interest in sharing your skills, please consider me in line too!
If you do have time/interest in sharing your skills, please consider me in line too!
CraigMark. What's your day time lowest temps throughout the year. I'm curious at what temps your torts won't leave the heated enclosure.
Mark, please tell Brenda, I said she is one Smart Lady for not letting you put an eyesore in her garden I am always so impressed with your work and trying to just be happy for you guys enjoying such beautiful fruits of your creative labor rather then be jealous, which admittedly... I am... just a tiny bit, sorry! The double tier planter is a genius idea! I absolutely LOVE the whole build, and everything about it, they double hide, plants, sprinklers, and ALL. Would you be able to include all the pics from this thread with your detailed descriptions in our "OUTDOOR ENCLOSURE ideas" section? I think they should be there for those keepers who are talented and skilled designers and builders like you. The rest of us (like "all the Pearlys of the tortoise keepers' world" will just enjoy visiting your threads and for our torts we can use the "second best" option that requires only unskilled but hard physical labor- hauling very heavy cinderblocks, filling their hollow spaces with dirt and planting some heat loving tort friendly plants in those like so Mark thank you so much for taking your time to share your know-how with us here and please keep the pictures coming! Those petunias! Ahhhh!!!! Food for my soul!!!! Absolutely gorgeous!!! I'm sure the little torts love their new placeHow beautiful! ! !
Appreciated every time!
I have five questions:
1. Where did you get those awesome water dishes?
2. What are the purple and red/white flowers around the edges?
3. How are you keeping the O. bark inside the night box and not getting smooshed between the door and hinges?
4. Are you really counting out exactly 100 grape leaves?
5. I noticed the doors are closed in the pic that shows the tortoises out and about. What is going on there? You don't do anything arbitrarily.
A note about the box heat: You remember the double door male leopard and single sulcata boxes down at the bottom of the ranch, below the horse trailer? Those are in full sun from about 9am until 7 PMish. The double door especially was getting over 100 degrees even with ambient high temps only in the 80s. Since the box tops needed fresh paint anyway, I primed them all with Killz 2 and left them white. I figure I'll prime them white every spring, and then paint them dark every late fall. This will serve to keep the paint fresh and not peeling. I didn't know how much difference it would make, but it kept temps about 10 degrees lower inside the boxes.
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A second note about the box heat: I don't know how your sprinklers are set, but I'm using one of those screw-on hose attachment sprinklers that makes about a 20' circle. I run it for about 20 minutes at 1 or 2pm and again for 20 minutes at about 5pm. I let the edge of the circle overlap about half of the box tops, and generally soak the ground around the boxes.
The result of these two things are box temps of 90-91 on a 102 degree day in full sun all day. Previously the box temps would have been 110-120 inside under these conditions.
Thank you again for a wonderful thread and for setting an amazing example for all of us to strive for.
I normally give it a week. With hotter temps it would be ok in 2-3 days but I've always allowed enough time before I need it to give the full week.Mark,
How long did you let the interior paint air out before using the night box for the torts?
I'm working on my new heated tort house (a slightly modified copy of Tom's house) and I, too am painting the interior. I'm trying to determine how long to wait before it's usable.