"Redfoots and Yellowfoots" by Amanda Ebenhack

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Madkins007

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"Redfoots and Yellowfoots: The Natural History, Captive Care, and Breeding of Chelonoidis carbonaria and Chelonoidis denticulata" by Amanda Ebenhack, Turtles of the World, Volume 3. 2009, Living Art Publishing. 165 pages with color photographs, a couple maps, photo gallery section, 2 bibliographies, and a list of websites. $21.95 at Amazon.com at the time of the original review.

"Redfoots and Yellowfoots" is a nicely done book that covers a lot of information on these related species. There is some excellent coverage of topics such as island forms, telling Red- and Yellow-foots apart, identifying sexual characteristics, regional variations, and incubating eggs. There are also nice lists of safe and unsafe plants (mostly taken from other sites and properly documented.)

I was pleased to see a relatively large section on outdoor pens, even if it tends to lean towards keeping them in the southern states. The photographs are beautiful and plentiful, and used to good effect to reinforce her points. The book also has a good medical section with an emphasis on parasites.

The author is a Floridian with a decade of experience and is a wildlife rehab expert with a focus on tortoises, so she has some good credentials. There is a slight Florida bias in the book that makes it a little less helpful to us in the North, but it is not a big deal.

Some keepers may disagree with her on some points ("We do know excess protein can cause pyramiding", p.81, no source sited), but overall her recommendations are sound. She recommends the diet plan we are seeing more often lately- more fiber, more variety, less fruit, less meat,and spends no time talking about things like oxalic acid or other 'anti-nutrients'. She does feel strongly that sugary foods (bananas, too much fruit, some commercial foods, etc.) can be addictive and cause problems. She also tells keepers to watch the animal's droppings, although she does not go into detail on this.

A couple very minor quibbles...

I found the formating to be a bit choppy. Sometimes the photos push the text into awkward columns, other times, the paragraphs seem short and abrupt. The photographs in my opinion are a mixed blessing- I often wished there were fewer of them and more text, or things like bullet points or checklists.

I did not have any real 'Wow!' moments reading this- nothing surprising or deeply thought provoking (of course, that may be because of the rash of such books I have read in the last year), and I had a few 'Huh?' moments, occasionally found myself trying to figure out what was meant by a paragraph or what the rationale for some point was.

Overall, a nice book but new keepers may want to consider Mike Pingleton's 'The Redfoot Manual' instead, and more advanced keepers may find that the Vinke and Vetter book 'South American Tortoises' covers the subject pretty well. (Both of these books were reviewed earlier in this forum.)

(reposted from www.turtleforum.com and edited by the author)
 

Stephanie Logan

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Well, my quibble is that someone who writes a book on South American tortoises didn't include Chaco's!!

I mean, really. :rolleyes:
 

Madkins007

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Stephanie Logan said:
Well, my quibble is that someone who writes a book on South American tortoises didn't include Chaco's!!

I mean, really. :rolleyes:

Except for the detail that it is a book about Red- and Yellow-foots... :)
 
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