I just love love love how folks have such a wonderful imagination to do these things!!
Thanks nay
Thanks nay
Sulcata Burrows
- Thread starter Tom
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Sigh ........ I only have a small suburban lot. I have no idea what I will do with my sulcata when he gets big. He's only 10 inches long and 7-1/2 pounds now. It's easy to control him.
(P.S. - I didn't choose him; would have researched and decided against. He was abandoned at my house almost 3 years ago, and I'm very fond of him.)
(P.S. - I didn't choose him; would have researched and decided against. He was abandoned at my house almost 3 years ago, and I'm very fond of him.)
Great ideas there Motero. I love the double decker design. What is the cover/top like?
motero said:
I love your set up.. Would love to see more pictures of the outside of your tort yard.. It looks super cool.
There is not much else to see, the rest looks like the first picture. Four shade trees that are twice as big now. Three patches of grass and a lot of dirt. The fence is old telephone poles cut and wired together.
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motero said:
It looks like your shade trees are palo verde trees, right? Do they eat the leaves?
I'm having technical difficulties getting temp readings. My remote probe's signal appears to not be able to penetrate the earth. The main unit can't seem to find the signal when the probe is down at the bottom of the burrow. I made a little capsule out of a plastic food jar with a string on it to put the probe down there. The problem is that I can't leave it down there unsupervised because the behemoths will get tangled up in the haystring that I am using. Unless someone has a better idea, I thin I will have to put a regular thermometer down there, leave it for a while and then pull it up to get my readings.
Put a hay bale over the opening of the burrow or maybe something else that is on hand that you could use. I wanna see these temps!!!
Its hard because three of them are sharing it. There is always at least one or two in there. I am NOT going down there with one of them in there! I gotta catch them in the late evening when they all come up to graze.
Tom said:
Ya know...I can probably connect the dots and surmise the reason behind your hesitation, but part of me just has to hear you say it (er, type it out)...
Why do you not want to go down there if one of them is in there? Is it because they'll get territorial about it?
LOL...In my mind's eye, I can just see Tom on his belly desperately trying to scoot backwards out of the burrow as a very irate adult sulcata is grunting and hissing, chasing him out and trying to bite his face.
HA HAStudentoftheReptile said:
. I could see it now I'll pick up the paper in the morning and the headlines will be man trampled to death by his own tortoise by climbing in its burrow. I'm sure thats not too bad of a way to go down huh Tom? I'm sure you'd have a smile on your face the whole time.
Sulcatas are extremely strong when it comes to wedging themselves in their burrows. Its barely big enough for them to fit down there, so it will be a tight squeeze for me. My fear is that they would charge and wedge me in there. If they wedged themselves anywhere around my chest area, I would not be able to breathe. If you've ever seen them in a burrow, they get pretty defensive and herky jerky. They dart around down there with surprising speed. They really revert to a wild mentality that we don't often see above ground. I'll handle big chimps, elephants, camels, giraffes, zebras, rattlesnakes, cobras, etc., but I am NOT going into a sulcata burrow WITH a sulcata in it!
Tom said:
"Wisdom"
It's Everything!
Tom said:
O yeah they are surprisingly very defensive when in their burrows. I dont let mine burrow but they sometimes build one in time before I can cover it up and they will just be chilling in front of their burrows and if I get close they just fly down backwards down their burrows. Its very cool to see. And even little sulcatas have ridiculous strength in their burrows. I have had the toughest time getting 12-13 inch sulcatas out of their burrows because they just cling on to the wall holding on for dear life (it may be the most tiring thing in the world getting them out of their burrows without food present
).
Lol this all sounds very fun to me!
TortoiseBoy1999 said:Lol this all sounds very fun to me!
Haha I bet it does sound fun to you.
but if you're trying to get one out of its burrow for a vet visit and you have under an hour to get him out and cleaned up for his appointment time, it's probably not very fun then.
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It's funny. I used to breed big pythons. It his is my first tortoise. She is 65lbs now and is a tough animal. She can and will hurt you if she does not want to be picked up.
They remind me of Burmese pythons. Burms get to the point when you no longer can pick them up. One person cannot support and hold one off the ground. This is the point where you realize that this is a big animal and if you have 5 or 6 it is quite a physical endeavor to get one out of its enclosure to clean it or take it to the vet.
Whoops big thumbs! Anyway I was just seeing so many comparisons between big constrictors and the big tortoises. Both rewarding but both challenging.
They remind me of Burmese pythons. Burms get to the point when you no longer can pick them up. One person cannot support and hold one off the ground. This is the point where you realize that this is a big animal and if you have 5 or 6 it is quite a physical endeavor to get one out of its enclosure to clean it or take it to the vet.
acrantophis said:
Whoops big thumbs! Anyway I was just seeing so many comparisons between big constrictors and the big tortoises. Both rewarding but both challenging.
We finally had a cooler day today, only 90ish, and they all came up. It is a tight squeeze. There was not room to turn around for a person. I went down head first. The burrow goes down about 8' and then curves to the right. Its a pretty steep constant angle of around 45 degrees until the last few feet, where it levels out and gets wide enough for two of them to be side by side and possibly turn around. I only went about half way down and then was able to toss a weighted line the rest of the way. We then marked where the line broke the surface and measured the line once I came back up. It is just over 15' from the surface to the farthest point in.
I took my camera and temp gun down in a baggie, but I didn't want to take my camera out because there was so much powdery loose dirt. I did pull the temp gun out. I was about 6-8' down and everywhere I pointed it the temps were from 73.9 to 74.1. I didn't take a humidity gauge down, but it feels and looks pretty damp. Not wet, but damp.
My coworker decided he wanted to have a go, so down he went. He is around six feet tall and "bean pole" would be a generous assessment of his physique. Mr. Gung Ho went all the way in, all the way down to the bottom. Once he was all the way down and almost able to reach the back wall, we could no longer see his feet when looking down into the tunnel from the surface. You could barely hear his voice even when shouting too.
They don't seem to be excavating much anymore. They were constantly working on it for the first few days, but after that, they seem pretty satisfied with their work and are now just using it.
I took my camera and temp gun down in a baggie, but I didn't want to take my camera out because there was so much powdery loose dirt. I did pull the temp gun out. I was about 6-8' down and everywhere I pointed it the temps were from 73.9 to 74.1. I didn't take a humidity gauge down, but it feels and looks pretty damp. Not wet, but damp.
My coworker decided he wanted to have a go, so down he went. He is around six feet tall and "bean pole" would be a generous assessment of his physique. Mr. Gung Ho went all the way in, all the way down to the bottom. Once he was all the way down and almost able to reach the back wall, we could no longer see his feet when looking down into the tunnel from the surface. You could barely hear his voice even when shouting too.
They don't seem to be excavating much anymore. They were constantly working on it for the first few days, but after that, they seem pretty satisfied with their work and are now just using it.
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