Outdoor enclosure expenses

[hunterk997]

It's still winter, but my father and I are building my Russian tortoise a 10' x 10' enclosure come this spring. He works at our town's lumber/ furniture company and said he will be able to get a lot of wood cheap (he built my hermann's 4'x2' enclosure for $15). But I want a "worst case" scenario. So what are the things I will need to build the enclosure? And if a price is known that would be great. We are also still trying to figure out how to build a door for a huge enclosure like that, because we have 3 dogs and tons of outside cats in our neighborhood. I think the nights stay warm enough in the summer (55f) for my Russian to stay out in good weather, so I want to build a lock/night box. I tried looking up instructions on how to build one but couldn't find specific details. Any help or knowledge on any of this would be great in helping my Russian getting a great enclosure.

 

[Yvonne G]

Chances are your Russian tortoise won't use a house. All mine just dig down into the dirt at night. I do have a cinder block laying on its side in the pen, and occasionally I'll see one of them inside the hole of the block. There's also a little dog house in there filled with leaf litter, but no one ever uses it.

You can just put your tortoise into the house at night, then block the door with a piece of plywood and a brick.

 

[stinax182]

hey there!
sounds like this is going to be a nice enclosure!! since your dad can get the wood cheap, that saves you a lot! unless you plan on keeping him outside with night temps below 60°f on a regular basis, you will not need a HEATED box, but a secure, water proof box is always a good bet. Russian tortoises are notorious escape artists and diggers. you will need to make a barrier a foot under the dirt that he cannot dig through (wire mess, wood) for the top you could make a sturdy frame with latches so it opens and buy hardwire cloth to cover it then maybe make or buy a small fence to keep the animals from ever reaching it. you should also cap the corners with wood because my tortoise use to shimmy up the two walls in the corner and climb out! do not underestimate them!

 

[goReptiles]

Are you talking about a hinged lid? You could use hardware cloth and make like a screen door. Use some hinges to connect the lid to the walls. You would need a few separate lids for that size enclosure. Heck you may be able to just buy a few wood screen doors instead of making something similar.

Or are you talking about a cave-like shelter?

 

[hunterk997]

Chances are your Russian tortoise won't use a house. All mine just dig down into the dirt at night. I do have a cinder block laying on its side in the pen, and occasionally I'll see one of them inside the hole of the block. There's also a little dog house in there filled with leaf litter, but no one ever uses it.

You can just put your tortoise into the house at night, then block the door with a piece of plywood and a brick.

Yes, I planned on putting her in the lock box and locking it at night (my dad worries a lot about something getting her) and then unlocking it and opening it in the morning and let her come out on her own.

 

[lynnedit]

Heather (Team Gomberg) has some hide boxes for her Russian tortoises which are great. Search some of her threads.

Basically, just a exterior plywood box (wood floor if you really want to be safe) with a slanted roof (asphalt shingles) and a hinged door that opens and rests on the ground as a ramp. You can set it on 4 bricks. I put aspen bedding in mine, but leaves would work.
For one RT, I would think 2'x2' would be fine, perhaps 18" high. Position it in the full shade so it doesn't bake all afternoon, and you aren't trying to lock your RT up in an oven.
If your tortoise is outside all day, he can even tolerate night temps down to 50f, as long as the sun hits the enclosure in the am and he can bask.

An alternative to digging down around the enclosure edge, is to place masonry caps or pavers all along the inside edge, a trick learned from Yvonne.
I can confirm that it is very effective: my tortoises use it as a walkway, but obviously they can't burrow down. I have created several hides in the middle, as well as plants like Rosemary or other herbs (Thyme) that they love to burrow under during hot days, or at night, so that's where they go. They are pretty good at hiding themselves away and usually decline to use the hide I made for them.
Your main goal should be to keep the doggies out, so whatever it takes to do that.

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And you have a great Dad.

 

[Terry Allan Hall]

Simplest would be to use landscaping timbers, such as this one:

About 3 or 4 levels high, with the corners capped. If you can spare an area of 8' X 8', you wont even have to cut then, just stack 'em, overlapping each level, as in the pic...use 8" nails to attach each level to the previous one. Easy Peasy!

As noted, these are escape artists, so dig down about a foot along the walls and fill the resulting ditch with large rocks, cement, or chicken wire..

Then decorate it with a shallow pond, a few bushes, a hide box (I use slabs of limestone to make a cave), :

Then maybe bury some short pieces of sewer pipe for tunnels to climb through, perhaps a few logs and rock piles to climb over...the only limit is your imagination!

If you get all your materials together, it's about a 1-day job, at most.

 

[Jacqui]

About 20 years ago, we made our Russian enclosure. We used hardware cloth, which was buried straight down about 6-8" and the at the top we bent the wire in towards the center of the enclosure about 6" to form a lip. We only used t-posts and elctrical posts.

A couple of years ago, I decided I wanted walls. All we did was add a framework for support and added a ring of wood around where the lip was. We joined the new wire to the old at that lip point. We had no concerns about needing strong wire, so we went with chicken wire for the sides.

If you look, you can see where the lip bends over inward on this picture.

This is really a two part enclosure with a walkway between. This is the door.

Just another view, as we were remodeling it.

A few thoughts.... I like making enclosures I can stand up and walk around in. Makes it so much easier to work with them then. I like the wire for many reasons such as the breeze can flow through, I never have to worry about a heavy rain flooding my enclosures, plants can grow through the wire for a more natural look and I have found my tortoises do no more pacing with an open view enclosure then they do with solid walls. When using timbers like the one Terry showed, those rotted here within 5-8 years. When I go to the time and expense of building an enclosure, I want it to last. I have never had a turtle or tortoise try to dig out of these enclosures. The tortoises never even have dug anywhere closer then 1' from the side, so I don't have anything along my edges. The wire lip keeps tortoises from climbing out, so no escapees.

 

[lynnedit]

You're right about pacing w/ or w/o solid sides, Jacqui. I have chain link fence wth solid walls up to 16" and they still pace and climb at times. :/
And it's a 40'x20' enclosure.

 

[hunterk997]

Sorry I kind of forgot about this thread. I really like both the wood idea and the wired idea. Jacqui, how much did it cost for you to build that enclosure? I really like the thought of being able to walk right into it. My budget is around $300. The only thing I'm unsure is if my parents will agree to that style of an enclosure. They want something that they can get uses out of once I move away. I guess they could make a garden out of it. And do you put chicken wire on the top too? We have raccoons and I think that would really ease my fear of something getting at my tortoise.

 

[Jacqui]

I did not cover the top of mine, because coons tend to stay away from here because of the dogs (mainly the coonhound). However because we put a framework up, I can easily add sections of tops if needed. I don't really know how much it would cost to build, because the bottom part is an old enclosure. Also, these are two enclosures with a middle walkway, so you would be making a smaller one. We also went the more expensive (but easier and faster) way with this one.

 

[Jacqui]

I think, especially with your Dad's discount that you could do this for under $300. Just figure out what you will need on paper and check the costs.

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Another option might be to use PVC as the framework. I don't know where you live (as in if you get snow), but we have one made this way for our old box turtle enclosure and it has held up well for years. A bigger one we made the weight of the snow broke the frame. These we did put a cover of chicken wire on.

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Yes, after you are done using the enclosure your parents could do a garden in there safe from raiding coons. Or perhaps put fine mesh on the sides and make themselves an outdoor seating area enclosed so no bugs could get in.

 

[peasinapod]

Decoration stuff like logs, stones etc. you can often find for free. If you have woods nearby cou can go and search for suitable material there, or maybe there's a neighbour who's cutting down a tree and you could reuse some branches etc. as climbing material. Broken terracotta pots make for great hides as well.

I got some really nice pieces of slate for free, just by asking around at a company which sells stoneslabs for outdoors etc, wether they had some damaged pieces they didn't need anymore. They had a huge pile full of scraps and I could just take as much as I wanted for free!

 

[hunterk997]

I showed my parents the enclosure pictures. He said that the wood he can get cheap is smaller pieces and scrap wood. So I probably couldn't afford to build any of those. Maybe we could build one with just three boards buried partly into the ground? We are building it off from our porch, so only three more sides will be needed. And I still have tons of chicken wire left, so I could bury that under the walls. Then we can create a hinged top with hardware cloth for a cover.

 

[lynnedit]

I think you need to work with what you have.
You can use 2x2's as stakes, and secure the scrap wood to those to create the sides in whatever shape you want. Be careful of burying chicken wire, as it can rust and sharp edges could poke your tortoise.
If you can waterproof the wood, you could just dig a trench 8" down and sink the wood down and back fill with gravel. That would work really well if you have 24" high wood pieces for the sides, that would give you 16" above ground.

 

[hunterk997]

I think you need to work with what you have.
You can use 2x2's as stakes, and secure the scrap wood to those to create the sides in whatever shape you want. Be careful of burying chicken wire, as it can rust and sharp edges could poke your tortoise.
If you can waterproof the wood, you could just dig a trench 8" down and sink the wood down and back fill with gravel. That would work really well if you have 24" high wood pieces for the sides, that would give you 16" above ground.

This is what I was thinking of doing. Thanks for the suggestion.