SAN DIEGO LEOPARD AND COLD WEATHER

[Ramsey]

Hey @Duff, @Wartortle and @beachylivin I too am here in San Diego. Just getting into the hobby with (an apparently very) young leopard. Torts seem to be more popular than I had expected here.

 

[Theo.tortoise.lover.7]

Hi All,

I have a 5 year-old male Leopard. He lives in our yard most of the year. It has been really cold lately. When the temperature dips below 60F at night I bring him inside, and it's been under 60 for the last month. I have Mercury Vapor bulb in a dome lamp for indoor heat. It works great but the tortoise wants nothing to do with it. He gets as far away from the lamp as possible. I also tried one of those heat coils that give off infrared heat and it worked like tortoise repellant.

My kids tossed one of their blankets in his enclosure and for the last month he's been burrowing in the blanket. I slide him under the lamp, but he moves to the opposite corner. He'll stay that way for 3-5 days at a time. I keep him under a large south facing window and when it's sunny he wakes up, eats, sometimes pees and heads outside. He doesn't have any respiratory issues and when he's warm his appetite is huge. I feed him grassland pellets and whatever he grazes on in the yard. He seems fine and isn't behaving any differently than he does in the warmer months (on the warm days).

He's around 20lbs and too big to put back in the wood tortoise house he lived in as a baby. I'm wondering if I need to get a pig blanket (heat mat) for him or is this normal behavior. I think I remember reading that a heat source from underneath isn't good for a tortoise, but I'm not sure what I've got going on now is OK either. I'm sure someone will let me know.

I'd be interested to hear what anyone else in Southern California does this time of year.

Thanks.

I live in Santa Barbara, and I am having the exact same issue right now. If you can, it is pretty cheap to run home depot, buy some plywood, and create you own tortoise enclosure inside. If you don't have a garage like me, keeping it in a bedroom, the laundry room, or anywhere else is fine. The other solution is if you have a garage that you don't use for a car, buy some cinder blocks and make a square enclosure on the ground and leave a few heat lamps over the top suspended from something securely. The cold spell should break soon. If feel you pain lol. I hope this helped.

 

[Theo.tortoise.lover.7]

Hi All,

I have a 5 year-old male Leopard. He lives in our yard most of the year. It has been really cold lately. When the temperature dips below 60F at night I bring him inside, and it's been under 60 for the last month. I have Mercury Vapor bulb in a dome lamp for indoor heat. It works great but the tortoise wants nothing to do with it. He gets as far away from the lamp as possible. I also tried one of those heat coils that give off infrared heat and it worked like tortoise repellant.

My kids tossed one of their blankets in his enclosure and for the last month he's been burrowing in the blanket. I slide him under the lamp, but he moves to the opposite corner. He'll stay that way for 3-5 days at a time. I keep him under a large south facing window and when it's sunny he wakes up, eats, sometimes pees and heads outside. He doesn't have any respiratory issues and when he's warm his appetite is huge. I feed him grassland pellets and whatever he grazes on in the yard. He seems fine and isn't behaving any differently than he does in the warmer months (on the warm days).

He's around 20lbs and too big to put back in the wood tortoise house he lived in as a baby. I'm wondering if I need to get a pig blanket (heat mat) for him or is this normal behavior. I think I remember reading that a heat source from underneath isn't good for a tortoise, but I'm not sure what I've got going on now is OK either. I'm sure someone will let me know.

I'd be interested to hear what anyone else in Southern California does this time of year.

Thanks.

I also forgot to mention that you decide to build a pen in a garage or bedroom or anywhere for that matter, the easiest thing to do is to line the ground with hay. It makes it smell better overall, and it also provides a little bit of food and better substrate to walk on.