Tom's Brumation Thread

[Sedona]

Some physiologists define hibernation as a feature of some small mammals wherein the normal heat production typical of mammals is reduced to achieve a greatly reduced body temperature and hence save the stored energy (and sometimes water) loss associated with normal heat production. Others might extend the definition to exceptional large mammals such as bears, which however do not reduce heat production to the same extent as small mammals.

The normal resting heat production of tortoises is ~10% of that of mammals at an equivalent body temperature, and is more-or-less constant at that temperature. By definition, therefore, tortoises don't/can't hibernate or, for that matter, use internal heat production to maintain a constant body temperature when not hibernating. "Brumation" was coined to differentiate the prolonged inactivity of such animals during winter months from "hibernation". To my knowledge, the briefer periods of inactivity in tortoises outside of winter months have no agreed-upon name, but others may know more.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hibernation is a mostly accurate description of the variety of phenomena in animals.

 

[mark1]

very helpful.......... there are what appear to be some substantial differences between what ectotherms do, and what endotherms do....... it seems to me the definition "metabolic suppression" in turtles and tortoises is more like metabolic depression ? i don't believe they are in control of their metabolism, the environment is, and they can only control their environment to a certain degree, after which they have no control..... imo healthy turtles and tortoises always seek out warmer up to their preferred body temperature, sometimes beyond..... i've never seen one seek out 50F over 60F, 60F over 70F, or 35F over 45F, i have seen them seek out 90-100F over 80F for periods of time, i've also seen them seek 80F over 90-100F, the circumstances for the differences seem clear...... their entire existence is to maintain as close to their optimum body temperature as they can 24/7/365.....

the timing of feeding cessation is a little hard to understand..... i lean toward the opinion of it being hormonal..... they don't all stop feeding at the same time, even in the exact same environments.... sometimes there are up to 3-4 weeks difference.....

interesting in reading small mammals actually "voluntarily" regain their normal body temperature at intermittent intervals during hibernation, and some of the reasons put forth why they may do this......... turtles and tortoises actually do likewise when the environment permits it, the possible reasons put forth for this are pretty similar.........

the more i see and read on turtle and tortoise hibernation/brumation the simpler it appears.....i look into estivation in turtles and tortoises , the more i look the more complicated it gets, i'm glad it doesn't and will never pertain to me, that one would require me going to school...

 

[Sedona]

Mammals are like cars that can heat the passenger compartment above outside temperature with heat generated by the engine. With few exceptions, reptiles are like cars with a much smaller engine and no heater. They heat up when parked in the sun, and equilibrate with their surroundings at other times. All have functional thermostats.

 

[Tortoise Nana]

Every fall we get bombarded here on the forum with all sorts of questions and problems regarding hibernation and tortoises "slowing down" for winter. The purpose of this thread is to talk about all aspects of this subject, to dispel some of the myths and mysteries, and give a "how to" list of instructions for people who want to do it. Hopefully, this thread will answer the vast majority of questions that we commonly encounter, but further questions are welcome, and more detailed explanation is always available for the asking.

Hibernation? Mammals hibernate. Its a process that involves burning fat stores to survive cold weather. I've been misusing the term for decades and didn't really care because everyone knew I meant. @Markw84 was kind enough to explain it in more detail and correct my ignorant mistake after all these years. Reptiles, including our temperate species of tortoises, do NOT hibernate. They brumate. Brumation involves different bodily processes than hibernation. Its a fascinating subject and I encourage anyone interested to dive deeper into it, but "brumation" is the correct term for what our tortoises do.

Tropical species like sulcatas, red foots, and star tortoises for example, do NOT brumate. Leaving one of these outside without a temperature controlled shelter during a North American winter is cruel and often fatal if temps drop low enough for long enough. You can get away with it in some cases in south Florida and parts of Arizona, but it is not "good" for these animals to drop below certain temperatures, even if they can "survive" these un-naturally low temperatures. I have seen countless tortoises die this way because ignorant people tell other ignorant people that "Its fine... I've been doing it for years..", and then they have no explanation for why the tortoise died. I'll end this paragraph with this: Keep tropical tortoise species at tropical temperatures. Enough said.

On to temperate species... What does temperate mean? Stolen from "Wikipedia":
In geography, the temperate climates of Earth occur in the middle latitudes (23.5° to 66.5° N/S of Equator), which span between the tropics and the polar regions of Earth. These zones generally have wider temperature ranges throughout the year and more distinct seasonal changes compared to tropical climates, where such variations are often small and usually only have precipitation changes.

I learned about the difference between tropical animals and temperate animals back in grade school, high school, college, and in my pet store jobs too. If no one previously introduced you to these terms and concepts, well... you're welcome! No part of the USA is in the tropics. Not even the southern most of the Florida keys, and certainly not Chula Vista here in Southern CA, nor the Southern tip of Texas reaching down so low. I was in Ft. Meyers FL two years ago in March and when I came outside one morning during an unusual cold spell, the overnight temperature had dropped to 49 degrees. That is not tropical! The temperature there hardly ever gets that low, but it happens and the tortoise keepers there know how to work around it. Phoenix Arizona feels like you are living inside an oven in summer time, but even there it occasionally drops down to freezing overnight during the odd winter cold spell.

How does this relate to our tortoises? Many of the tortoise species we keep are not native to areas within the tropics. These are the "temperate" species, and the subject of this thread. Russians, all the hermanni, most of the greeks (arguably all of them...), Chersina, Chaco tortoises, and all of the North American Gopherus species. These species all experience four seasons in their native ranges. The temperature extremes certainly vary between say Russian tortoises from Kazakhstan at one extreme and Tunisian Greeks from Northern Africa at the other. Most of these species brumate in the wild in winter time. It is my opinion, based on my years of keeping all sorts of tortoises and other reptiles from all over the world, that species that brumate in the wild should also be brumated in our captive environments. I find this yields the best results, maintains good health, and is most "natural" for these species.

But what if I don't want to brumate my tortoise, for any reason? You don't have to. As far as we can tell, it does no harm to them, and it doesn't stop reproduction or shorten their lifespans. As far as we know... There have been forum members who kept their temperate species up, eating and awake all winter for many years in a row with no apparent ill effect. If there is some detriment to not brumating these species, it remains hidden to me. Having said that... Your tortoise may have other ideas, and even with your best efforts, they somehow "know" it is winter and that they should be "asleep". We don't know how they know this, but they know. Some of them are in windowless basements with full spectrum bright lighting, including strong summer-like UVB levels, and temperatures are maintained unchanged, but they still somehow know what time of year it is outside.

Here are steps to take if you don't want to brumate your temperate species:
1. Add bright LED lighting in the 5000-6500K color range. Lots of it. Make it look like daytime outside looks.
2. Set light timers to be on for 13-14 hours.
3. Bump all ambient temperatures up a bit.
4. Keep night temps warmer. Shoot for no lower than the 70s over night.
5. Pull the tortoise out of hiding and soak it often. Don't let it stay hidden in a cool hide box all day.
6. I usually run HO UV tubes for 2-3 hours mid day. To keep a tortoise up, I might bump them up to 6-8 hours a day.

Sometimes these efforts fail, and the tortoise is just determined to remain dormant, not eat, and sleep away the winter months. In that case, you may decide to switch tactics and brumate the tortoise.

Many people are afraid of brumation. There are lots of horror stories and many tortoises die during the process when it is not done correctly. It is my observation that in almost all of these cases, people did one thing or another wrong to cause the problem. I myself have brumated dozens of reptiles over dozens of years and had only one problem. The one time I had a problem it was because I broke my own rules and followed the advice of someone who didn't understand my climate, and I let my Argentine tegus hibernate on their own outside. This was a mistake because my winters are not cold enough, and not consistently cold at all. We have spells in January with warm sunny temps the 80s regularly. These warm spells wreak havoc with animals that are supposed to be brumating. When done correctly, I have a 100% success rate. That is not coincidence or luck. That is the result of understanding the basics of the process and following a few simple steps. The reason so many tortoises die and we hear so many sad stories is because most people leave them outside to fend for themselves during the wind down time, regardless of current weather and temperatures, OR the other big one is people letting them brumate outside subject to the cruel whims of Mother Nature through a harsh frozen winter. There are some climates that get cold and stay cold outside, but not anywhere in the Southern United States. Here are some issues with brumating them outdoors in their enclosures:
1. Temperature fluctuation, temps too cold, and temps too warm, are all major problems. Wild weather swings can kill them. In my area we can have night temps in the 20s, and two days later hit a high of 90 degrees in January.
2. Rats. A dormant tortoise can literally be chewed to the bone.
3. Ants in some areas. Ants go underground to escape the cold too. They still need food when they are down there. A cold sleeping tortoise is ant food.
4. Flooding from rain or melting snow. Many a tortoise has drowned in cold water in ts shelter or burrow.
5. Burrow collapse. In cold weather, the tortoise will not have the energy to dig out and they can suffocate.
6. Predators. Food is scarce in winter. Raccoons, coyotes and others can sniff out tortoises as food sources.
7. Pet dogs. Many people let the dog out into the back yard for potty breaks and due to the cold weather, they stay inside. Next to dehydration, dogs are the number one killers and maimers of tortoises. A dog can find, dig up, and demolish a tortoise in seconds.

None of these things can happen to them indoors in controlled conditions, or outdoors in some sort of structure with the correct set up. For my way of doing it, the temperatures and conditions are completely controlled. The weather isn't much of a factor. With all the things that can go wrong, and all the uncertainty, I don't know why anyone would leave the tortoise to its own devices outside. Many people do though. Some people who are skilled and experienced at it, and know their own area and climate well, have the ability to make it work year after year. Until it doesn't work one year. Most of the people who do it this way will have lots of stories about the ones they lost. I don't lose any of them. I only have one sad story and its because I did it 'their way" that one time.

I'm frequently asked: How do they survive in the wild? 1. Many don't. 2. Your back yard is not the wild. In the wild tortoises have hundreds of square miles of territory to scout out and look for just the right conditions to dig in and survive the winter. They need the right soil type, the right slope, a slope facing the right direction, the right vegetation, etc... Many tortoise species, like our CA desert tortoises make long deep burrows and stay way down underground where temperatures are cool and stable, unlike the surface.

Another big point of contention is the age or size at which a tortoise should first brumate. Many sources say don't do it for the first year, or the first three years, or the first five years. Why not? They all do it in the wild. Winter happens in the wild every single year, even the year they hatch. Again, if left outside in some sort of above ground shelter or burrow, they are not likely to survive. If prepared for brumation correctly, kept at the correct temperature, and brought out of brumation correctly, they all survive and thrive. I do this with all temperate baby lizards, snakes, turtles and tortoises their first year and every year. Bert Langerwurf, "The Lizard King", told me, "if you don't hibernate Argentine tegus their first year and every year, they will never reproduce." I never tested this theory, but he did and firmly believed it. Failure to brumate doesn't seem to stop our beloved tortoise species from reproducing, but I have to believe it does have endocrinological effects. I don't skip brumation for any temperate reptile unless I have some reason to suspect they are unhealthy or unfit for it in some way. I don't see bruamtion as some big monumental scary thing. Its just a normal easy annual process that all temperate reptiles engage in to survive a cold winter.

FIRST AND FOREMOST: MAKE A DECISION!
Either you are going to brumate your tortoise, or you are not. This is a deliberate process, not something that just sort of happens. Either way is fine, but some limbo area in between is NOT fine. Many times the tortoise slows down, gets less active, stops eating, and people just leave them sitting there in an indoor enclosure at room temperature. This is not okay. This is not brumation. Likewise, leaving them outside to fend for themselves as winter approaches is not okay either. The weather can and does change drastically day by day in Fall. It could be too warm or too cold, If they are just sitting outside subjected to these extremes while trapped in our small enclosures. It can be disastrous in many ways. We have brought these animals into our captive environments and we must help them to survive and thrive in these foreign environments. Either wake that tortoise up using the steps listed a few paragraphs earlier in this thread, or follow these next steps and begin the process of preparing the tortoise for brumation. YOU decide if your tortoise is going to brumate, or not, and plan accordingly. Make this decision by late summer and start taking the right steps for which ever way you want to go.

How to prepare a tortoise for brumation:
1. Bring them down gradually. I find about one month to be just right to get them ready for a winter slumber. It could be condensed into two or three weeks, or extended to six weeks, but somewhere around four weeks works best in my experience.
2. Make sure their gut is empty BEFORE dropping temps or shortening days. Two weeks of no food with the normal warm temps should do it. This should illustrate why letting them do this on their own outside isn't safe. They need to be fasted for two weeks while the temperatures and light duration stays "normal". What happens if the weather turns cold three days into the fast? What happens if there is a warm spell and they keep eating outside while we want them to be fasting? We have to have control of the lighting and temperatures to some degree. Indoors is the obvious solution, but a temperature controlled night box with a heat lamp outside can make it work too. If we control the temperatures, it does't matter what the weather does. I set my night boxes to stay around 65F overnight for these first two weeks of fasting. If the weather is warm and sunny, they control their own basking temperature. If the weather is cold and overcast, I set the basking light inside the night box on its timer, so they can warm up to operating temperature, digest the food in their gut, and get it moving out. After two weeks of fasting at warm temps, I start dropping the thermostat setting every other day and running the basking lamps less and less each day. After two weeks of cooling which comes after two weeks of fasting at warmed temps, they are ready to be placed into their brumation container and dropped to the correct temperature for the species.
3. Make sure they are well hydrated by soaking them frequently in the days and weeks before and after brumation. Soak early and often. This goes for all species.
4. Make sure the temperature is consistent and cold enough for the entire brumation time. 38-39F for Russians, 49-50F for DTs. 45ish for Greeks, hermanni and Chersina. How do you do this outside? Everywhere in North America and Europe has highly variable temperatures all winter long.
5. Don't let them brumate outside in a self dug burrow in your backyard. NOT safe! Don't do it in your basement, unless the temps are stable and correct for your species. What about in the closet? Does your closet in your house stay a consistent 38-45 degrees all winter long? Mine sure doesn't. Use a thermometer.

More notes to consider:
1. How long to brumate? In most cases, 8 weeks is enough and 16 weeks is not too long. I tend to go shorter for babies, and longer for larger adults, but this varies. On average, I do 12-14 weeks for adult animals. There is a wide margin of error available here. There is no "set" time for this.
2. When do I start this process? This may vary with your climate, but I usually feed them up good and soak frequently in October, and begin the fast in November. Keep soaking during the fast. I finish the cooling process and start the actual brumation around the beginning of December. It is okay to deviate from this general timeline. You should be controlling the temperature through al of this.
3. When do I bring them out of brumaton? Mine sleep all December, January, and February. I start watching for a long warm sunny spell in the 10 day forecast in March. If it stays cold longer than usual, I might leave them until we get closer to April. If we have a warm February and March is warm and sunny early on, I wake them earlier. I let the weather influence this decision, but I still control the temperatures throughout.
4. What sort of container do I brumate them in? I like plastic shoe boxes. I use some of whatever substrate they are already used to, and I keep if very lightly damp. Not wet, but not dry and dusty either. I make the substrate 3-4 inches deep. You can drill holes around the top, but this isn't necessary as they are not air tight.
5. How do I keep the temperature constant and consistent? Use a fridge. Full size fridges are the best way and most reliable. Mini fridges tend to not hold a consistent temp very well. Your thermometer will be your guide. A few years ago, I had an observation with my Chersina's outdoor insulated night box. Much like my swimming pool in winter, the well insulated night box remained at a stable temperature that was an average of the day time high and night time low. 65 degree days and 35 degree nights held a box temp of 48-50 with little change day to day. I let my Chersina brumate outside the last few years this way and it worked very well. During winter warm spells I had to put some ice bottles in the box a few times, far from the tortoise and where they couldn't be reached, but the temp stayed very consistent even when we had these hot spells or cold spells too. There are many variables involved and ultimately your thermometers are the only way to get a reliable answer on whether or not something like this will work for you and your tortoise, but it CAN work for some people. For someone who lives where it is much colder than here, a heat source could be set to 40-45 degrees, depending on the needs of your species, so that the insulated night box never gets too cold. A well built insulated box protects them from temperature extremes, predators, inclement weather, and you don't have to buy or run a fridge. If you can get the right temperatures, this method can work for you. If not, the fridge method always works.
6. Fridges are not air tight, and neither are plastic shoe boxes. Your tortoise will not suffocate.
7. I don't weigh them or mess with them much during brumation. You can if you want to. I prefer to leave them alone.
8. How do I bring the tortoise out of brumation? When I see that March warm spell coming, I begin adjusting the thermostat up a couple of degrees each day. Usually the tortoise will start to move around within a few days. When I see tortoise activity as the temperature is slowly coming up, I'll move them into their night box at a similar temp to where they were in the fridge, and the next day I'll look for activity. If they are awake, I'll turn the heat lamp on and give them the opportunity to bask for a bit, and give them a lukewarm soak. I don't want to shock them with "hot" water, so this first soak is on the cool side, but they have to be active and moving first. I don't want a torpid sleepy tortoise to drown! They tend to come out of brumation quickly. After a day or two, mine are usually rearing to go. If all looks good, I will set the basking lamp to come on the next morning, and then on next morning, I go in and set the ambient temp back to 60-65 to keep it warmer over night. This is not scientific. I do it by "feel" and by observing the tortoise's behavior. If they are moving slow and not with it, I do things gradually and take several days to warm them back up. If they are wide awake and ready to resume living, I let them. I usually offer food within two or three days of coming out of the brumation chamber, and they almost always eat it right away, as long as temps have been warm enough and they've had time to "wake".
9. What if I decided not to brumate, but my tortoise had other ideas and is insistent? That is okay. Do the two week fast and soaks with the warm temps and basking lamps still on, followed by the two week cooling period, and then brumate them for as long as you can. Even 4 weeks of brumation will often "re-boot" their brain and get them going again after a suitable gradual warm up. You may also decide to wait to wake them until well into April to give them more time since you started late. All of the above is fine and works.
10. What if I decided to brumate, but this darn tortoise just refuses and keeps scratching at the sides of the brumation container? This is okay too. Wake him up and keep him up all winter. Have an indoor enclosure set up with the correct heating and lighting, or if you live in a mild climate like mine, gradually bump the night box temp back up and kick on the heat lamp if the weather is not cooperating.

While I have kept brumating species awake through winter and I know others have successfully done it too, it is my opinion that species that brumate in the wild should also brumate in captivity. It just needs to be done correctly. Leaving them outside to figure it out and deal with the rigors of winter in the small spaces (like backyards) that we stick them in, is not my idea of doing it "correctly". I know far too many that have died this way. Don't let these horror stories from people who did not properly prepare, or brumate their animals in a safe, controlled way, scare you. Brumation is totally natural and totally safe when a few simple guidelines are observed.

For review, here is the correct care info for the temperate species we are discussing. You can see pics of the type of "night box" I mentioned here:

The Best Way To Raise Any Temperate Species Of Tortoise

I chose the title of this care sheet very carefully. Are there other ways to raise babies and care for adults? Yes. Yes there are, but those ways are not as good. What follows is the BEST way, according to 30 years of research and experimentation with hundreds of babies of many species. What is...

tortoiseforum.org

As always, questions and conversation are welcome.

Happy almost Spring Tom. I’m letting you know that my dear Rock came out of his brumation a few days ago. I went to check on him and he was gone. I searched his entire enclosure and couldn’t find him. I went looking for him the next day and accidentally found him next to a rock the same size as him. I brought him in and gave him a good soaking and then he ate. He (we) made it once again. Every year I learn more and more about my little ( getting really big ) charge. My son is living in Washington, so Rock is 90% mine. My son pays for his food. I can’t thank you enough for all of your information and knowledge about these amazing animals. Roll, his sister is doing well and flourishing in her new home. I’m so glad I listened to you and found her a new home because her brother was bullying her.

 

[dogmommy4]

My Native Desert Tortoise puts himself in the corner of the living room when he brumates. Floyd was found at a park in NW Las Vegas by a park ranger friend of mine. Most likely a drop off - he followed her around for over an hour once he "found" her. He appeared to be domesticated so she called me to ask if I'd be interested in housing him. I posted notices in various places with so luck finding his owner - that will be 2 years ago this August. I joined the local tortoise group, had him chipped and a wellness check done. Best guess is he may be around 10-13 years old. He has a berm that was built by a guy connected with the tortoise group and he uses it in the summer when the heat picks up. He also "knocks" on the back door if he wants to come in. Both years he has gone down in mid to late Sept. and gets up for good in mid to late April.

My question; how soon after he is up for sure should I soak him? I'm assuming in slightly warm water. I sprinkle him with the hose in the summer and he seems to like that. He also has a submerged shallow "pool" that he can walk into. I have put him in it, but he usually just walks out after a minute or two. Should I soak Floyd periodically during the summer?

 

[Tom]

My Native Desert Tortoise puts himself in the corner of the living room when he brumates. Floyd was found at a park in NW Las Vegas by a park ranger friend of mine. Most likely a drop off - he followed her around for over an hour once he "found" her. He appeared to be domesticated so she called me to ask if I'd be interested in housing him. I posted notices in various places with so luck finding his owner - that will be 2 years ago this August. I joined the local tortoise group, had him chipped and a wellness check done. Best guess is he may be around 10-13 years old. He has a berm that was built by a guy connected with the tortoise group and he uses it in the summer when the heat picks up. He also "knocks" on the back door if he wants to come in. Both years he has gone down in mid to late Sept. and gets up for good in mid to late April.

My question; how soon after he is up for sure should I soak him? I'm assuming in slightly warm water. I sprinkle him with the hose in the summer and he seems to like that. He also has a submerged shallow "pool" that he can walk into. I have put him in it, but he usually just walks out after a minute or two. Should I soak Floyd periodically during the summer?

The corner of the living room is not brumating. That is exactly the wrong way to do it, which is the primary subject of the original post of this thread. That is not warm enough to function, but not cold enough to brumate. You are lucky he is still alive, and this just demonstrates how much they are able to survive.

Free roaming in the house is another practice that kills many tortoises every year. You will now say that you've made everything tortoise safe and you supervise closely. So did everyone else who lost a tortoise this way. It's not safe, and it can't be made safe. There is a long list of ways tortoises have become sick, injured, or dead because of free roaming the house. They need to be kept in their enclosures, and their enclosure need to be suitably large to meet their exercise needs.

Having a burrow to escape the scorching summer heat is ideal. You got that part right, but you need a means to control the temperatures for the rest of the year, especially leading into and out of brumation. The weather doesn't always cooperate, and you need to be able to make the necessary adjustments. Our backyards are not the wild, and what may work in the wild does not work in our captive environments.

To answer your questions:
1. They should be soaked daily for a week or two when they come out of brumation. This should be done as soon as they are warmed up and "awake" and it should be warm water.
2. Should you soak Floyd in summer? Yes. Dehydration and the family dog are the top two killers of DTs. They manage to survive in the wild with little water, but in our backyards with the way we typically feed and manage them, bladder stones are common. Bladder stones form for two reasons: Lack of hydration, and lack of exercise. Soaking and feeding the right foods takes care of the hydration part. Having the correct housing and temperatures takes care of the exercise part. If it's too hot or too cold, they just sit there. Having the burrow prevents the too hot part in summer. Having and insulated, temperature controlled night box takes care of the too cold part during times like this when the weather is 90 degrees for a week and then dropping back into the 50 and 60s next week. Soak Floyd at least two or three times per week over summer. Use a tall sided, opaque container and keep the water warm for the entire soak. Soak for at least 30 minutes, and longer will do no harm. You can soak him every day if you want, but every day isn't "necessary" for a healthy adult. You really can't soak too much, but you can soak not enough.

This thread is for people new to the forum, not necessarily new to tortoises. There is a lot of helpful info in here and questions are welcome. Most of the care info offered by tortoise groups, the government sites, and even vets will result in an untimely death for DTs. We've been doing it wrong for decades, and most of the people involved keep repeating the same old wrong info. I see it every day, and I do what I can to make it better for as many DTs as I can:

Info For New People. Please Read This First.

Hello and welcome to tortoiseforum.org! We are all glad you are here! There is no other forum like this anywhere. We have tens of thousands of members from all over the world ranging from kids with their first tortoise to people who have been breeding and keeping high end tortoises since the...

tortoiseforum.org

This thread is specifically about your species in our climate:

The Best Way To Raise Any Temperate Species Of Tortoise

I chose the title of this care sheet very carefully. Are there other ways to raise babies and care for adults? Yes. Yes there are, but those ways are not as good. What follows is the BEST way, according to 30 years of research and experimentation with hundreds of babies of many species. What is...

tortoiseforum.org

I'm glad you found us, and if you let us help, Floyd will be glad in his own way too.

 

[Sedona]

First, I realize this is a brumation thread, not a soaking thread. Thus, two questions:

1. Is there a soaking thread?
2. I had thought that the skin and shell were largely impervious to liquid water. Other than an opportunity to drink, which our Sonoran desert tortoise seems to ignore when placed in water, what is the purpose of soaking -- and what is the evidence that it is beneficial?

 

[Sedona]

First, I realize this is a brumation thread, not a soaking thread. Thus, two questions:

1. Is there a soaking thread?
2. I had thought that the skin and shell were largely impervious to liquid water. Other than an opportunity to drink, which our Sonoran desert tortoise seems to ignore when placed in water, what is the purpose of soaking -- and what is the evidence that it is beneficial?

To answer my own question, it appears that tortoises can absorb liquid water via the cloaca. [Indeed, some aquatic reptiles can 'breathe' (i.e., take up oxygen and excrete carbon dioxide) via the cloaca.] If so, soaking does place the cloaca in proximity to liquid water irrespective of the permeability of the skin/shell and voluntary drinking.

 

[Tom]

First, I realize this is a brumation thread, not a soaking thread. Thus, two questions:

1. Is there a soaking thread?
2. I had thought that the skin and shell were largely impervious to liquid water. Other than an opportunity to drink, which our Sonoran desert tortoise seems to ignore when placed in water, what is the purpose of soaking -- and what is the evidence that it is beneficial?

1. No. Soaking info is included in most of the care threads. This has been discussed at length many times over the years here.
2. Skin and shell are impervious to water to some degree, but the mouth and cloaca are not. The purpose of soaking is to keep them well hydrated, keep the bowels moving, and help to both to excrete any urates that may have formed, or prevent urates from forming in the first place. When placed in water the grooves in the scales of the head direct water into the mouth, even if the tortoise doesn't put its head down and drink. There is well documented evidence of this in many desert lizards, and also chameleons from Yemen. There is also evidence to support that water is absorbed through the cloaca.

What is the evidence that it is beneficial? We could talk about this for days, but I'll try to keep it brief. I've been keeping many species of tortoises for many decades. I did it "wrong", the old dry way, for about 20 years. It produced poor results. Somewhere in the mid 90s, I realized that all of the care advice of the day was wrong, did not work, produced poor results, and I began a life long quest to determine what was wrong, what was right, and why. Most of my experimentation was with sulcatas, but also leopards of both types, Russians, stars, Radiata, chersina, Galapagos, hermanni, and DTs. Many side-by-side comparisons with groups of clutch mates over many years, have led me to the conclusions and assertions that I make.

The top two killers of DTs, at least in my experience, are dogs and dehydration complications. Brumation mistakes being a close third. So many DTs die from bladder stones. Bladder stones are formed from dehydration and when there is a lack of exercise. Luckily most people have a large yard or enclosure for a DT, but they don't get the temps correct which causes a lack of exercise. In short, it's too hot above ground in summer, and most people do not have proper underground housing for them to escape the heat, so they sit in the shade and cook all summer. Likewise, the above ground temps are too cool in much of spring and fall, and people don't give them a proper temperature controlled shelter to help get them through the rough weather patches during the lead in or lead out of brumation. Finally, leaving them to fend for themselves over winter without properly controlling their brumation temperature is often fatal, though some people get away with it and the tortoise manages to survive somehow.

Evidence? Want scientifically reviewed citations? There are none. No one is studying this. I am. Many others here are. The evidence is easy to see here every day, and it is overwhelming. People all of the entire world have adopted these husbandry methods and everyone gets the same positive results. Germany, China, UK, Spain, France, Mexico, Africa from Morocco to Cape Town, Philippines... Everywhere it is the same. On the other hand, we regularly get new members that are following the typical old wrong advice, and we continually see the results of that. Got a new one today. Many of these new people abandon their previous care methods and adopt the new methods that we advocate, including daily soaks for babies and regular frequent soaks for adults, and the turn around is dramatic and fantastic.

There was a CTTC show a few years ago. One of the proponents of these new methods set up a booth and brought a smooth leopard tortoise she had grown using these new methods with a whole picture book of enclosures, smooth tortoise pictures, and loads of pictorial evidence to support her claims. The booth next to hers was staffed by renowned DT experts that were clearly upset and seemingly disgusted by this young lady's assertions that soaking, hydration and humidity were good for a tortoise. They did not have any healthy tortoise specimens on display. Instead, they had an extensive collection of bladder stones ranging from grape sized to baseball sized, all removed from dead DTs. While standing there looking at this evidence of death by dehydration, they would tell people that humidity, soaking, and damp substrate would cause shell rot and respiratory infections. As they were saying this, I had a dozen hatchlings at home that were getting daily 40 minute warm soaks, living on damp substrate in a closed chamber with a humid hide. All were growing, active and thriving. All I could do was shake my head at the willful, persistent ignorance.

Questions welcome!

 

[tortoising2025]

Every fall we get bombarded here on the forum with all sorts of questions and problems regarding hibernation and tortoises "slowing down" for winter. The purpose of this thread is to talk about all aspects of this subject, to dispel some of the myths and mysteries, and give a "how to" list of instructions for people who want to do it. Hopefully, this thread will answer the vast majority of questions that we commonly encounter, but further questions are welcome, and more detailed explanation is always available for the asking.

Hibernation? Mammals hibernate. Its a process that involves burning fat stores to survive cold weather. I've been misusing the term for decades and didn't really care because everyone knew I meant. @Markw84 was kind enough to explain it in more detail and correct my ignorant mistake after all these years. Reptiles, including our temperate species of tortoises, do NOT hibernate. They brumate. Brumation involves different bodily processes than hibernation. Its a fascinating subject and I encourage anyone interested to dive deeper into it, but "brumation" is the correct term for what our tortoises do.

Tropical species like sulcatas, red foots, and star tortoises for example, do NOT brumate. Leaving one of these outside without a temperature controlled shelter during a North American winter is cruel and often fatal if temps drop low enough for long enough. You can get away with it in some cases in south Florida and parts of Arizona, but it is not "good" for these animals to drop below certain temperatures, even if they can "survive" these un-naturally low temperatures. I have seen countless tortoises die this way because ignorant people tell other ignorant people that "Its fine... I've been doing it for years..", and then they have no explanation for why the tortoise died. I'll end this paragraph with this: Keep tropical tortoise species at tropical temperatures. Enough said.

On to temperate species... What does temperate mean? Stolen from "Wikipedia":
In geography, the temperate climates of Earth occur in the middle latitudes (23.5° to 66.5° N/S of Equator), which span between the tropics and the polar regions of Earth. These zones generally have wider temperature ranges throughout the year and more distinct seasonal changes compared to tropical climates, where such variations are often small and usually only have precipitation changes.

I learned about the difference between tropical animals and temperate animals back in grade school, high school, college, and in my pet store jobs too. If no one previously introduced you to these terms and concepts, well... you're welcome! No part of the USA is in the tropics. Not even the southern most of the Florida keys, and certainly not Chula Vista here in Southern CA, nor the Southern tip of Texas reaching down so low. I was in Ft. Meyers FL two years ago in March and when I came outside one morning during an unusual cold spell, the overnight temperature had dropped to 49 degrees. That is not tropical! The temperature there hardly ever gets that low, but it happens and the tortoise keepers there know how to work around it. Phoenix Arizona feels like you are living inside an oven in summer time, but even there it occasionally drops down to freezing overnight during the odd winter cold spell.

How does this relate to our tortoises? Many of the tortoise species we keep are not native to areas within the tropics. These are the "temperate" species, and the subject of this thread. Russians, all the hermanni, most of the greeks (arguably all of them...), Chersina, Chaco tortoises, and all of the North American Gopherus species. These species all experience four seasons in their native ranges. The temperature extremes certainly vary between say Russian tortoises from Kazakhstan at one extreme and Tunisian Greeks from Northern Africa at the other. Most of these species brumate in the wild in winter time. It is my opinion, based on my years of keeping all sorts of tortoises and other reptiles from all over the world, that species that brumate in the wild should also be brumated in our captive environments. I find this yields the best results, maintains good health, and is most "natural" for these species.

But what if I don't want to brumate my tortoise, for any reason? You don't have to. As far as we can tell, it does no harm to them, and it doesn't stop reproduction or shorten their lifespans. As far as we know... There have been forum members who kept their temperate species up, eating and awake all winter for many years in a row with no apparent ill effect. If there is some detriment to not brumating these species, it remains hidden to me. Having said that... Your tortoise may have other ideas, and even with your best efforts, they somehow "know" it is winter and that they should be "asleep". We don't know how they know this, but they know. Some of them are in windowless basements with full spectrum bright lighting, including strong summer-like UVB levels, and temperatures are maintained unchanged, but they still somehow know what time of year it is outside.

Here are steps to take if you don't want to brumate your temperate species:
1. Add bright LED lighting in the 5000-6500K color range. Lots of it. Make it look like daytime outside looks.
2. Set light timers to be on for 13-14 hours.
3. Bump all ambient temperatures up a bit.
4. Keep night temps warmer. Shoot for no lower than the 70s over night.
5. Pull the tortoise out of hiding and soak it often. Don't let it stay hidden in a cool hide box all day.
6. I usually run HO UV tubes for 2-3 hours mid day. To keep a tortoise up, I might bump them up to 6-8 hours a day.

Sometimes these efforts fail, and the tortoise is just determined to remain dormant, not eat, and sleep away the winter months. In that case, you may decide to switch tactics and brumate the tortoise.

Many people are afraid of brumation. There are lots of horror stories and many tortoises die during the process when it is not done correctly. It is my observation that in almost all of these cases, people did one thing or another wrong to cause the problem. I myself have brumated dozens of reptiles over dozens of years and had only one problem. The one time I had a problem it was because I broke my own rules and followed the advice of someone who didn't understand my climate, and I let my Argentine tegus hibernate on their own outside. This was a mistake because my winters are not cold enough, and not consistently cold at all. We have spells in January with warm sunny temps the 80s regularly. These warm spells wreak havoc with animals that are supposed to be brumating. When done correctly, I have a 100% success rate. That is not coincidence or luck. That is the result of understanding the basics of the process and following a few simple steps. The reason so many tortoises die and we hear so many sad stories is because most people leave them outside to fend for themselves during the wind down time, regardless of current weather and temperatures, OR the other big one is people letting them brumate outside subject to the cruel whims of Mother Nature through a harsh frozen winter. There are some climates that get cold and stay cold outside, but not anywhere in the Southern United States. Here are some issues with brumating them outdoors in their enclosures:
1. Temperature fluctuation, temps too cold, and temps too warm, are all major problems. Wild weather swings can kill them. In my area we can have night temps in the 20s, and two days later hit a high of 90 degrees in January.
2. Rats. A dormant tortoise can literally be chewed to the bone.
3. Ants in some areas. Ants go underground to escape the cold too. They still need food when they are down there. A cold sleeping tortoise is ant food.
4. Flooding from rain or melting snow. Many a tortoise has drowned in cold water in ts shelter or burrow.
5. Burrow collapse. In cold weather, the tortoise will not have the energy to dig out and they can suffocate.
6. Predators. Food is scarce in winter. Raccoons, coyotes and others can sniff out tortoises as food sources.
7. Pet dogs. Many people let the dog out into the back yard for potty breaks and due to the cold weather, they stay inside. Next to dehydration, dogs are the number one killers and maimers of tortoises. A dog can find, dig up, and demolish a tortoise in seconds.

None of these things can happen to them indoors in controlled conditions, or outdoors in some sort of structure with the correct set up. For my way of doing it, the temperatures and conditions are completely controlled. The weather isn't much of a factor. With all the things that can go wrong, and all the uncertainty, I don't know why anyone would leave the tortoise to its own devices outside. Many people do though. Some people who are skilled and experienced at it, and know their own area and climate well, have the ability to make it work year after year. Until it doesn't work one year. Most of the people who do it this way will have lots of stories about the ones they lost. I don't lose any of them. I only have one sad story and its because I did it 'their way" that one time.

I'm frequently asked: How do they survive in the wild? 1. Many don't. 2. Your back yard is not the wild. In the wild tortoises have hundreds of square miles of territory to scout out and look for just the right conditions to dig in and survive the winter. They need the right soil type, the right slope, a slope facing the right direction, the right vegetation, etc... Many tortoise species, like our CA desert tortoises make long deep burrows and stay way down underground where temperatures are cool and stable, unlike the surface.

Another big point of contention is the age or size at which a tortoise should first brumate. Many sources say don't do it for the first year, or the first three years, or the first five years. Why not? They all do it in the wild. Winter happens in the wild every single year, even the year they hatch. Again, if left outside in some sort of above ground shelter or burrow, they are not likely to survive. If prepared for brumation correctly, kept at the correct temperature, and brought out of brumation correctly, they all survive and thrive. I do this with all temperate baby lizards, snakes, turtles and tortoises their first year and every year. Bert Langerwurf, "The Lizard King", told me, "if you don't hibernate Argentine tegus their first year and every year, they will never reproduce." I never tested this theory, but he did and firmly believed it. Failure to brumate doesn't seem to stop our beloved tortoise species from reproducing, but I have to believe it does have endocrinological effects. I don't skip brumation for any temperate reptile unless I have some reason to suspect they are unhealthy or unfit for it in some way. I don't see bruamtion as some big monumental scary thing. Its just a normal easy annual process that all temperate reptiles engage in to survive a cold winter.

FIRST AND FOREMOST: MAKE A DECISION!
Either you are going to brumate your tortoise, or you are not. This is a deliberate process, not something that just sort of happens. Either way is fine, but some limbo area in between is NOT fine. Many times the tortoise slows down, gets less active, stops eating, and people just leave them sitting there in an indoor enclosure at room temperature. This is not okay. This is not brumation. Likewise, leaving them outside to fend for themselves as winter approaches is not okay either. The weather can and does change drastically day by day in Fall. It could be too warm or too cold, If they are just sitting outside subjected to these extremes while trapped in our small enclosures. It can be disastrous in many ways. We have brought these animals into our captive environments and we must help them to survive and thrive in these foreign environments. Either wake that tortoise up using the steps listed a few paragraphs earlier in this thread, or follow these next steps and begin the process of preparing the tortoise for brumation. YOU decide if your tortoise is going to brumate, or not, and plan accordingly. Make this decision by late summer and start taking the right steps for which ever way you want to go.

How to prepare a tortoise for brumation:
1. Bring them down gradually. I find about one month to be just right to get them ready for a winter slumber. It could be condensed into two or three weeks, or extended to six weeks, but somewhere around four weeks works best in my experience.
2. Make sure their gut is empty BEFORE dropping temps or shortening days. Two weeks of no food with the normal warm temps should do it. This should illustrate why letting them do this on their own outside isn't safe. They need to be fasted for two weeks while the temperatures and light duration stays "normal". What happens if the weather turns cold three days into the fast? What happens if there is a warm spell and they keep eating outside while we want them to be fasting? We have to have control of the lighting and temperatures to some degree. Indoors is the obvious solution, but a temperature controlled night box with a heat lamp outside can make it work too. If we control the temperatures, it does't matter what the weather does. I set my night boxes to stay around 65F overnight for these first two weeks of fasting. If the weather is warm and sunny, they control their own basking temperature. If the weather is cold and overcast, I set the basking light inside the night box on its timer, so they can warm up to operating temperature, digest the food in their gut, and get it moving out. After two weeks of fasting at warm temps, I start dropping the thermostat setting every other day and running the basking lamps less and less each day. After two weeks of cooling which comes after two weeks of fasting at warmed temps, they are ready to be placed into their brumation container and dropped to the correct temperature for the species.
3. Make sure they are well hydrated by soaking them frequently in the days and weeks before and after brumation. Soak early and often. This goes for all species.
4. Make sure the temperature is consistent and cold enough for the entire brumation time. 38-39F for Russians, 49-50F for DTs. 45ish for Greeks, hermanni and Chersina. How do you do this outside? Everywhere in North America and Europe has highly variable temperatures all winter long.
5. Don't let them brumate outside in a self dug burrow in your backyard. NOT safe! Don't do it in your basement, unless the temps are stable and correct for your species. What about in the closet? Does your closet in your house stay a consistent 38-45 degrees all winter long? Mine sure doesn't. Use a thermometer.

More notes to consider:
1. How long to brumate? In most cases, 8 weeks is enough and 16 weeks is not too long. I tend to go shorter for babies, and longer for larger adults, but this varies. On average, I do 12-14 weeks for adult animals. There is a wide margin of error available here. There is no "set" time for this.
2. When do I start this process? This may vary with your climate, but I usually feed them up good and soak frequently in October, and begin the fast in November. Keep soaking during the fast. I finish the cooling process and start the actual brumation around the beginning of December. It is okay to deviate from this general timeline. You should be controlling the temperature through al of this.
3. When do I bring them out of brumaton? Mine sleep all December, January, and February. I start watching for a long warm sunny spell in the 10 day forecast in March. If it stays cold longer than usual, I might leave them until we get closer to April. If we have a warm February and March is warm and sunny early on, I wake them earlier. I let the weather influence this decision, but I still control the temperatures throughout.
4. What sort of container do I brumate them in? I like plastic shoe boxes. I use some of whatever substrate they are already used to, and I keep if very lightly damp. Not wet, but not dry and dusty either. I make the substrate 3-4 inches deep. You can drill holes around the top, but this isn't necessary as they are not air tight.
5. How do I keep the temperature constant and consistent? Use a fridge. Full size fridges are the best way and most reliable. Mini fridges tend to not hold a consistent temp very well. Your thermometer will be your guide. A few years ago, I had an observation with my Chersina's outdoor insulated night box. Much like my swimming pool in winter, the well insulated night box remained at a stable temperature that was an average of the day time high and night time low. 65 degree days and 35 degree nights held a box temp of 48-50 with little change day to day. I let my Chersina brumate outside the last few years this way and it worked very well. During winter warm spells I had to put some ice bottles in the box a few times, far from the tortoise and where they couldn't be reached, but the temp stayed very consistent even when we had these hot spells or cold spells too. There are many variables involved and ultimately your thermometers are the only way to get a reliable answer on whether or not something like this will work for you and your tortoise, but it CAN work for some people. For someone who lives where it is much colder than here, a heat source could be set to 40-45 degrees, depending on the needs of your species, so that the insulated night box never gets too cold. A well built insulated box protects them from temperature extremes, predators, inclement weather, and you don't have to buy or run a fridge. If you can get the right temperatures, this method can work for you. If not, the fridge method always works.
6. Fridges are not air tight, and neither are plastic shoe boxes. Your tortoise will not suffocate.
7. I don't weigh them or mess with them much during brumation. You can if you want to. I prefer to leave them alone.
8. How do I bring the tortoise out of brumation? When I see that March warm spell coming, I begin adjusting the thermostat up a couple of degrees each day. Usually the tortoise will start to move around within a few days. When I see tortoise activity as the temperature is slowly coming up, I'll move them into their night box at a similar temp to where they were in the fridge, and the next day I'll look for activity. If they are awake, I'll turn the heat lamp on and give them the opportunity to bask for a bit, and give them a lukewarm soak. I don't want to shock them with "hot" water, so this first soak is on the cool side, but they have to be active and moving first. I don't want a torpid sleepy tortoise to drown! They tend to come out of brumation quickly. After a day or two, mine are usually rearing to go. If all looks good, I will set the basking lamp to come on the next morning, and then on next morning, I go in and set the ambient temp back to 60-65 to keep it warmer over night. This is not scientific. I do it by "feel" and by observing the tortoise's behavior. If they are moving slow and not with it, I do things gradually and take several days to warm them back up. If they are wide awake and ready to resume living, I let them. I usually offer food within two or three days of coming out of the brumation chamber, and they almost always eat it right away, as long as temps have been warm enough and they've had time to "wake".
9. What if I decided not to brumate, but my tortoise had other ideas and is insistent? That is okay. Do the two week fast and soaks with the warm temps and basking lamps still on, followed by the two week cooling period, and then brumate them for as long as you can. Even 4 weeks of brumation will often "re-boot" their brain and get them going again after a suitable gradual warm up. You may also decide to wait to wake them until well into April to give them more time since you started late. All of the above is fine and works.
10. What if I decided to brumate, but this darn tortoise just refuses and keeps scratching at the sides of the brumation container? This is okay too. Wake him up and keep him up all winter. Have an indoor enclosure set up with the correct heating and lighting, or if you live in a mild climate like mine, gradually bump the night box temp back up and kick on the heat lamp if the weather is not cooperating.

While I have kept brumating species awake through winter and I know others have successfully done it too, it is my opinion that species that brumate in the wild should also brumate in captivity. It just needs to be done correctly. Leaving them outside to figure it out and deal with the rigors of winter in the small spaces (like backyards) that we stick them in, is not my idea of doing it "correctly". I know far too many that have died this way. Don't let these horror stories from people who did not properly prepare, or brumate their animals in a safe, controlled way, scare you. Brumation is totally natural and totally safe when a few simple guidelines are observed.

For review, here is the correct care info for the temperate species we are discussing. You can see pics of the type of "night box" I mentioned here:

The Best Way To Raise Any Temperate Species Of Tortoise

I chose the title of this care sheet very carefully. Are there other ways to raise babies and care for adults? Yes. Yes there are, but those ways are not as good. What follows is the BEST way, according to 30 years of research and experimentation with hundreds of babies of many species. What is...

tortoiseforum.org

As always, questions and conversation are welcome.

Very interesting thankyou

 

[Naiyan]

Every fall we get bombarded here on the forum with all sorts of questions and problems regarding hibernation and tortoises "slowing down" for winter. The purpose of this thread is to talk about all aspects of this subject, to dispel some of the myths and mysteries, and give a "how to" list of instructions for people who want to do it. Hopefully, this thread will answer the vast majority of questions that we commonly encounter, but further questions are welcome, and more detailed explanation is always available for the asking.

Hibernation? Mammals hibernate. Its a process that involves burning fat stores to survive cold weather. I've been misusing the term for decades and didn't really care because everyone knew I meant. @Markw84 was kind enough to explain it in more detail and correct my ignorant mistake after all these years. Reptiles, including our temperate species of tortoises, do NOT hibernate. They brumate. Brumation involves different bodily processes than hibernation. Its a fascinating subject and I encourage anyone interested to dive deeper into it, but "brumation" is the correct term for what our tortoises do.

Tropical species like sulcatas, red foots, and star tortoises for example, do NOT brumate. Leaving one of these outside without a temperature controlled shelter during a North American winter is cruel and often fatal if temps drop low enough for long enough. You can get away with it in some cases in south Florida and parts of Arizona, but it is not "good" for these animals to drop below certain temperatures, even if they can "survive" these un-naturally low temperatures. I have seen countless tortoises die this way because ignorant people tell other ignorant people that "Its fine... I've been doing it for years..", and then they have no explanation for why the tortoise died. I'll end this paragraph with this: Keep tropical tortoise species at tropical temperatures. Enough said.

On to temperate species... What does temperate mean? Stolen from "Wikipedia":
In geography, the temperate climates of Earth occur in the middle latitudes (23.5° to 66.5° N/S of Equator), which span between the tropics and the polar regions of Earth. These zones generally have wider temperature ranges throughout the year and more distinct seasonal changes compared to tropical climates, where such variations are often small and usually only have precipitation changes.

I learned about the difference between tropical animals and temperate animals back in grade school, high school, college, and in my pet store jobs too. If no one previously introduced you to these terms and concepts, well... you're welcome! No part of the USA is in the tropics. Not even the southern most of the Florida keys, and certainly not Chula Vista here in Southern CA, nor the Southern tip of Texas reaching down so low. I was in Ft. Meyers FL two years ago in March and when I came outside one morning during an unusual cold spell, the overnight temperature had dropped to 49 degrees. That is not tropical! The temperature there hardly ever gets that low, but it happens and the tortoise keepers there know how to work around it. Phoenix Arizona feels like you are living inside an oven in summer time, but even there it occasionally drops down to freezing overnight during the odd winter cold spell.

How does this relate to our tortoises? Many of the tortoise species we keep are not native to areas within the tropics. These are the "temperate" species, and the subject of this thread. Russians, all the hermanni, most of the greeks (arguably all of them...), Chersina, Chaco tortoises, and all of the North American Gopherus species. These species all experience four seasons in their native ranges. The temperature extremes certainly vary between say Russian tortoises from Kazakhstan at one extreme and Tunisian Greeks from Northern Africa at the other. Most of these species brumate in the wild in winter time. It is my opinion, based on my years of keeping all sorts of tortoises and other reptiles from all over the world, that species that brumate in the wild should also be brumated in our captive environments. I find this yields the best results, maintains good health, and is most "natural" for these species.

But what if I don't want to brumate my tortoise, for any reason? You don't have to. As far as we can tell, it does no harm to them, and it doesn't stop reproduction or shorten their lifespans. As far as we know... There have been forum members who kept their temperate species up, eating and awake all winter for many years in a row with no apparent ill effect. If there is some detriment to not brumating these species, it remains hidden to me. Having said that... Your tortoise may have other ideas, and even with your best efforts, they somehow "know" it is winter and that they should be "asleep". We don't know how they know this, but they know. Some of them are in windowless basements with full spectrum bright lighting, including strong summer-like UVB levels, and temperatures are maintained unchanged, but they still somehow know what time of year it is outside.

Here are steps to take if you don't want to brumate your temperate species:
1. Add bright LED lighting in the 5000-6500K color range. Lots of it. Make it look like daytime outside looks.
2. Set light timers to be on for 13-14 hours.
3. Bump all ambient temperatures up a bit.
4. Keep night temps warmer. Shoot for no lower than the 70s over night.
5. Pull the tortoise out of hiding and soak it often. Don't let it stay hidden in a cool hide box all day.
6. I usually run HO UV tubes for 2-3 hours mid day. To keep a tortoise up, I might bump them up to 6-8 hours a day.

Sometimes these efforts fail, and the tortoise is just determined to remain dormant, not eat, and sleep away the winter months. In that case, you may decide to switch tactics and brumate the tortoise.

Many people are afraid of brumation. There are lots of horror stories and many tortoises die during the process when it is not done correctly. It is my observation that in almost all of these cases, people did one thing or another wrong to cause the problem. I myself have brumated dozens of reptiles over dozens of years and had only one problem. The one time I had a problem it was because I broke my own rules and followed the advice of someone who didn't understand my climate, and I let my Argentine tegus hibernate on their own outside. This was a mistake because my winters are not cold enough, and not consistently cold at all. We have spells in January with warm sunny temps the 80s regularly. These warm spells wreak havoc with animals that are supposed to be brumating. When done correctly, I have a 100% success rate. That is not coincidence or luck. That is the result of understanding the basics of the process and following a few simple steps. The reason so many tortoises die and we hear so many sad stories is because most people leave them outside to fend for themselves during the wind down time, regardless of current weather and temperatures, OR the other big one is people letting them brumate outside subject to the cruel whims of Mother Nature through a harsh frozen winter. There are some climates that get cold and stay cold outside, but not anywhere in the Southern United States. Here are some issues with brumating them outdoors in their enclosures:
1. Temperature fluctuation, temps too cold, and temps too warm, are all major problems. Wild weather swings can kill them. In my area we can have night temps in the 20s, and two days later hit a high of 90 degrees in January.
2. Rats. A dormant tortoise can literally be chewed to the bone.
3. Ants in some areas. Ants go underground to escape the cold too. They still need food when they are down there. A cold sleeping tortoise is ant food.
4. Flooding from rain or melting snow. Many a tortoise has drowned in cold water in ts shelter or burrow.
5. Burrow collapse. In cold weather, the tortoise will not have the energy to dig out and they can suffocate.
6. Predators. Food is scarce in winter. Raccoons, coyotes and others can sniff out tortoises as food sources.
7. Pet dogs. Many people let the dog out into the back yard for potty breaks and due to the cold weather, they stay inside. Next to dehydration, dogs are the number one killers and maimers of tortoises. A dog can find, dig up, and demolish a tortoise in seconds.

None of these things can happen to them indoors in controlled conditions, or outdoors in some sort of structure with the correct set up. For my way of doing it, the temperatures and conditions are completely controlled. The weather isn't much of a factor. With all the things that can go wrong, and all the uncertainty, I don't know why anyone would leave the tortoise to its own devices outside. Many people do though. Some people who are skilled and experienced at it, and know their own area and climate well, have the ability to make it work year after year. Until it doesn't work one year. Most of the people who do it this way will have lots of stories about the ones they lost. I don't lose any of them. I only have one sad story and its because I did it 'their way" that one time.

I'm frequently asked: How do they survive in the wild? 1. Many don't. 2. Your back yard is not the wild. In the wild tortoises have hundreds of square miles of territory to scout out and look for just the right conditions to dig in and survive the winter. They need the right soil type, the right slope, a slope facing the right direction, the right vegetation, etc... Many tortoise species, like our CA desert tortoises make long deep burrows and stay way down underground where temperatures are cool and stable, unlike the surface.

Another big point of contention is the age or size at which a tortoise should first brumate. Many sources say don't do it for the first year, or the first three years, or the first five years. Why not? They all do it in the wild. Winter happens in the wild every single year, even the year they hatch. Again, if left outside in some sort of above ground shelter or burrow, they are not likely to survive. If prepared for brumation correctly, kept at the correct temperature, and brought out of brumation correctly, they all survive and thrive. I do this with all temperate baby lizards, snakes, turtles and tortoises their first year and every year. Bert Langerwurf, "The Lizard King", told me, "if you don't hibernate Argentine tegus their first year and every year, they will never reproduce." I never tested this theory, but he did and firmly believed it. Failure to brumate doesn't seem to stop our beloved tortoise species from reproducing, but I have to believe it does have endocrinological effects. I don't skip brumation for any temperate reptile unless I have some reason to suspect they are unhealthy or unfit for it in some way. I don't see bruamtion as some big monumental scary thing. Its just a normal easy annual process that all temperate reptiles engage in to survive a cold winter.

FIRST AND FOREMOST: MAKE A DECISION!
Either you are going to brumate your tortoise, or you are not. This is a deliberate process, not something that just sort of happens. Either way is fine, but some limbo area in between is NOT fine. Many times the tortoise slows down, gets less active, stops eating, and people just leave them sitting there in an indoor enclosure at room temperature. This is not okay. This is not brumation. Likewise, leaving them outside to fend for themselves as winter approaches is not okay either. The weather can and does change drastically day by day in Fall. It could be too warm or too cold, If they are just sitting outside subjected to these extremes while trapped in our small enclosures. It can be disastrous in many ways. We have brought these animals into our captive environments and we must help them to survive and thrive in these foreign environments. Either wake that tortoise up using the steps listed a few paragraphs earlier in this thread, or follow these next steps and begin the process of preparing the tortoise for brumation. YOU decide if your tortoise is going to brumate, or not, and plan accordingly. Make this decision by late summer and start taking the right steps for which ever way you want to go.

How to prepare a tortoise for brumation:
1. Bring them down gradually. I find about one month to be just right to get them ready for a winter slumber. It could be condensed into two or three weeks, or extended to six weeks, but somewhere around four weeks works best in my experience.
2. Make sure their gut is empty BEFORE dropping temps or shortening days. Two weeks of no food with the normal warm temps should do it. This should illustrate why letting them do this on their own outside isn't safe. They need to be fasted for two weeks while the temperatures and light duration stays "normal". What happens if the weather turns cold three days into the fast? What happens if there is a warm spell and they keep eating outside while we want them to be fasting? We have to have control of the lighting and temperatures to some degree. Indoors is the obvious solution, but a temperature controlled night box with a heat lamp outside can make it work too. If we control the temperatures, it does't matter what the weather does. I set my night boxes to stay around 65F overnight for these first two weeks of fasting. If the weather is warm and sunny, they control their own basking temperature. If the weather is cold and overcast, I set the basking light inside the night box on its timer, so they can warm up to operating temperature, digest the food in their gut, and get it moving out. After two weeks of fasting at warm temps, I start dropping the thermostat setting every other day and running the basking lamps less and less each day. After two weeks of cooling which comes after two weeks of fasting at warmed temps, they are ready to be placed into their brumation container and dropped to the correct temperature for the species.
3. Make sure they are well hydrated by soaking them frequently in the days and weeks before and after brumation. Soak early and often. This goes for all species.
4. Make sure the temperature is consistent and cold enough for the entire brumation time. 38-39F for Russians, 49-50F for DTs. 45ish for Greeks, hermanni and Chersina. How do you do this outside? Everywhere in North America and Europe has highly variable temperatures all winter long.
5. Don't let them brumate outside in a self dug burrow in your backyard. NOT safe! Don't do it in your basement, unless the temps are stable and correct for your species. What about in the closet? Does your closet in your house stay a consistent 38-45 degrees all winter long? Mine sure doesn't. Use a thermometer.

More notes to consider:
1. How long to brumate? In most cases, 8 weeks is enough and 16 weeks is not too long. I tend to go shorter for babies, and longer for larger adults, but this varies. On average, I do 12-14 weeks for adult animals. There is a wide margin of error available here. There is no "set" time for this.
2. When do I start this process? This may vary with your climate, but I usually feed them up good and soak frequently in October, and begin the fast in November. Keep soaking during the fast. I finish the cooling process and start the actual brumation around the beginning of December. It is okay to deviate from this general timeline. You should be controlling the temperature through al of this.
3. When do I bring them out of brumaton? Mine sleep all December, January, and February. I start watching for a long warm sunny spell in the 10 day forecast in March. If it stays cold longer than usual, I might leave them until we get closer to April. If we have a warm February and March is warm and sunny early on, I wake them earlier. I let the weather influence this decision, but I still control the temperatures throughout.
4. What sort of container do I brumate them in? I like plastic shoe boxes. I use some of whatever substrate they are already used to, and I keep if very lightly damp. Not wet, but not dry and dusty either. I make the substrate 3-4 inches deep. You can drill holes around the top, but this isn't necessary as they are not air tight.
5. How do I keep the temperature constant and consistent? Use a fridge. Full size fridges are the best way and most reliable. Mini fridges tend to not hold a consistent temp very well. Your thermometer will be your guide. A few years ago, I had an observation with my Chersina's outdoor insulated night box. Much like my swimming pool in winter, the well insulated night box remained at a stable temperature that was an average of the day time high and night time low. 65 degree days and 35 degree nights held a box temp of 48-50 with little change day to day. I let my Chersina brumate outside the last few years this way and it worked very well. During winter warm spells I had to put some ice bottles in the box a few times, far from the tortoise and where they couldn't be reached, but the temp stayed very consistent even when we had these hot spells or cold spells too. There are many variables involved and ultimately your thermometers are the only way to get a reliable answer on whether or not something like this will work for you and your tortoise, but it CAN work for some people. For someone who lives where it is much colder than here, a heat source could be set to 40-45 degrees, depending on the needs of your species, so that the insulated night box never gets too cold. A well built insulated box protects them from temperature extremes, predators, inclement weather, and you don't have to buy or run a fridge. If you can get the right temperatures, this method can work for you. If not, the fridge method always works.
6. Fridges are not air tight, and neither are plastic shoe boxes. Your tortoise will not suffocate.
7. I don't weigh them or mess with them much during brumation. You can if you want to. I prefer to leave them alone.
8. How do I bring the tortoise out of brumation? When I see that March warm spell coming, I begin adjusting the thermostat up a couple of degrees each day. Usually the tortoise will start to move around within a few days. When I see tortoise activity as the temperature is slowly coming up, I'll move them into their night box at a similar temp to where they were in the fridge, and the next day I'll look for activity. If they are awake, I'll turn the heat lamp on and give them the opportunity to bask for a bit, and give them a lukewarm soak. I don't want to shock them with "hot" water, so this first soak is on the cool side, but they have to be active and moving first. I don't want a torpid sleepy tortoise to drown! They tend to come out of brumation quickly. After a day or two, mine are usually rearing to go. If all looks good, I will set the basking lamp to come on the next morning, and then on next morning, I go in and set the ambient temp back to 60-65 to keep it warmer over night. This is not scientific. I do it by "feel" and by observing the tortoise's behavior. If they are moving slow and not with it, I do things gradually and take several days to warm them back up. If they are wide awake and ready to resume living, I let them. I usually offer food within two or three days of coming out of the brumation chamber, and they almost always eat it right away, as long as temps have been warm enough and they've had time to "wake".
9. What if I decided not to brumate, but my tortoise had other ideas and is insistent? That is okay. Do the two week fast and soaks with the warm temps and basking lamps still on, followed by the two week cooling period, and then brumate them for as long as you can. Even 4 weeks of brumation will often "re-boot" their brain and get them going again after a suitable gradual warm up. You may also decide to wait to wake them until well into April to give them more time since you started late. All of the above is fine and works.
10. What if I decided to brumate, but this darn tortoise just refuses and keeps scratching at the sides of the brumation container? This is okay too. Wake him up and keep him up all winter. Have an indoor enclosure set up with the correct heating and lighting, or if you live in a mild climate like mine, gradually bump the night box temp back up and kick on the heat lamp if the weather is not cooperating.

While I have kept brumating species awake through winter and I know others have successfully done it too, it is my opinion that species that brumate in the wild should also brumate in captivity. It just needs to be done correctly. Leaving them outside to figure it out and deal with the rigors of winter in the small spaces (like backyards) that we stick them in, is not my idea of doing it "correctly". I know far too many that have died this way. Don't let these horror stories from people who did not properly prepare, or brumate their animals in a safe, controlled way, scare you. Brumation is totally natural and totally safe when a few simple guidelines are observed.

For review, here is the correct care info for the temperate species we are discussing. You can see pics of the type of "night box" I mentioned here:

The Best Way To Raise Any Temperate Species Of Tortoise

I chose the title of this care sheet very carefully. Are there other ways to raise babies and care for adults? Yes. Yes there are, but those ways are not as good. What follows is the BEST way, according to 30 years of research and experimentation with hundreds of babies of many species. What is...

tortoiseforum.org

As always, questions and conversation are welcome.

Hi, I had some questions because it's my first time doing this. I read this post last year and it explained what my tortoise was trying to do, but I didn't let her brumate because I wasn't prepared and I did follow what you said to do, like soaking her everyday and making sure she eats. But I wanted to try to do it this year. She is a desert tortoise and she's 3 years old. She is also indoors because we live in Nevada and I don't want her to bake or turn into an ice cube, but I did want to make a outdoor enclosure for her to go in during spring and early summer.
1. So I wanted to know if I can keep her in a cardboard shoe box? I have one that I didn't throw away and it is clean and in good condition.
2. Is there a way to check if she's still alive without ruining her brumation? I don't want to accidentally kill her because this is her first time.
3. Unfortunately some gnats are in her enclosure because I left my window open and they just started multiplying in her enclosure but they don't bother her. Will they start to if she's dormant and not moving?
4. Would the heater bother her during brumation? My parents do keep the heater on during winter, but I close my vent when it gets too hot in my room and crack open my window because I have lots of plants in my room that would not like that hot air.

Please get to this when you can! Thank you for making this post, it is really helped me understand more about what goes on with her during the winter. Your posts have really helped me understand how important it is to care for their lives and what they really need to thrive. It's very similar to taking care of a kid to me and I have to take responsibility of her life.

 

[Tom]

Hi, I had some questions because it's my first time doing this. I read this post last year and it explained what my tortoise was trying to do, but I didn't let her brumate because I wasn't prepared and I did follow what you said to do, like soaking her everyday and making sure she eats. But I wanted to try to do it this year. She is a desert tortoise and she's 3 years old. She is also indoors because we live in Nevada and I don't want her to bake or turn into an ice cube, but I did want to make a outdoor enclosure for her to go in during spring and early summer.
1. So I wanted to know if I can keep her in a cardboard shoe box? I have one that I didn't throw away and it is clean and in good condition.
2. Is there a way to check if she's still alive without ruining her brumation? I don't want to accidentally kill her because this is her first time.
3. Unfortunately some gnats are in her enclosure because I left my window open and they just started multiplying in her enclosure but they don't bother her. Will they start to if she's dormant and not moving?
4. Would the heater bother her during brumation? My parents do keep the heater on during winter, but I close my vent when it gets too hot in my room and crack open my window because I have lots of plants in my room that would not like that hot air.

Please get to this when you can! Thank you for making this post, it is really helped me understand more about what goes on with her during the winter. Your posts have really helped me understand how important it is to care for their lives and what they really need to thrive. It's very similar to taking care of a kid to me and I have to take responsibility of her life.

We are still two months away from starting this.

1. Cardboard will leak and disintegrate if it gets wet. Use a plastic shoe box.
2. You can peek in on her.
3. Phoned file won't bother the tortoise, but you can't brumate her in the enclosure at room temp so she won't be there anyway.
4. The heater won't "bother" her, but it will make it much too warm. They need to be kept at a steady 45-50 degree. Room temp is much too warm. That is the "limbo" mentioned in the thread.

 

[Tortoise Nana]

1. No. Soaking info is included in most of the care threads. This has been discussed at length many times over the years here.
2. Skin and shell are impervious to water to some degree, but the mouth and cloaca are not. The purpose of soaking is to keep them well hydrated, keep the bowels moving, and help to both to excrete any urates that may have formed, or prevent urates from forming in the first place. When placed in water the grooves in the scales of the head direct water into the mouth, even if the tortoise doesn't put its head down and drink. There is well documented evidence of this in many desert lizards, and also chameleons from Yemen. There is also evidence to support that water is absorbed through the cloaca.

What is the evidence that it is beneficial? We could talk about this for days, but I'll try to keep it brief. I've been keeping many species of tortoises for many decades. I did it "wrong", the old dry way, for about 20 years. It produced poor results. Somewhere in the mid 90s, I realized that all of the care advice of the day was wrong, did not work, produced poor results, and I began a life long quest to determine what was wrong, what was right, and why. Most of my experimentation was with sulcatas, but also leopards of both types, Russians, stars, Radiata, chersina, Galapagos, hermanni, and DTs. Many side-by-side comparisons with groups of clutch mates over many years, have led me to the conclusions and assertions that I make.

The top two killers of DTs, at least in my experience, are dogs and dehydration complications. Brumation mistakes being a close third. So many DTs die from bladder stones. Bladder stones are formed from dehydration and when there is a lack of exercise. Luckily most people have a large yard or enclosure for a DT, but they don't get the temps correct which causes a lack of exercise. In short, it's too hot above ground in summer, and most people do not have proper underground housing for them to escape the heat, so they sit in the shade and cook all summer. Likewise, the above ground temps are too cool in much of spring and fall, and people don't give them a proper temperature controlled shelter to help get them through the rough weather patches during the lead in or lead out of brumation. Finally, leaving them to fend for themselves over winter without properly controlling their brumation temperature is often fatal, though some people get away with it and the tortoise manages to survive somehow.

Evidence? Want scientifically reviewed citations? There are none. No one is studying this. I am. Many others here are. The evidence is easy to see here every day, and it is overwhelming. People all of the entire world have adopted these husbandry methods and everyone gets the same positive results. Germany, China, UK, Spain, France, Mexico, Africa from Morocco to Cape Town, Philippines... Everywhere it is the same. On the other hand, we regularly get new members that are following the typical old wrong advice, and we continually see the results of that. Got a new one today. Many of these new people abandon their previous care methods and adopt the new methods that we advocate, including daily soaks for babies and regular frequent soaks for adults, and the turn around is dramatic and fantastic.

There was a CTTC show a few years ago. One of the proponents of these new methods set up a booth and brought a smooth leopard tortoise she had grown using these new methods with a whole picture book of enclosures, smooth tortoise pictures, and loads of pictorial evidence to support her claims. The booth next to hers was staffed by renowned DT experts that were clearly upset and seemingly disgusted by this young lady's assertions that soaking, hydration and humidity were good for a tortoise. They did not have any healthy tortoise specimens on display. Instead, they had an extensive collection of bladder stones ranging from grape sized to baseball sized, all removed from dead DTs. While standing there looking at this evidence of death by dehydration, they would tell people that humidity, soaking, and damp substrate would cause shell rot and respiratory infections. As they were saying this, I had a dozen hatchlings at home that were getting daily 40 minute warm soaks, living on damp substrate in a closed chamber with a humid hide. All were growing, active and thriving. All I could do was shake my head at the willful, persistent ignorance.

Questions welcome!

You are my DTT guru. I bought Rock a kiddy pool since he was getting to large for the kitchen sink. He loves it ( $6 at Walmart on sale). Hanson’s every other day for 1/2 hr or more and seems to really enjoy his pool time. The best investment, ever. This month ( September) he turns 6 years old. I don’t think either of us would have made it this far if it weren’t for Tortise Forum. Rock will be getting ready for his brumation in 3 months. My most stressful part of being a tort mom.
PS. Rock’s sister Roll is doing well in her new home. No more bullying

 

[Megatron's Mom]

I figured this might be the place to ask about brumating hognoses. Mostly trying to fight the fridge and get the temps right. I just can't get the fridge to stay between 50-69, preferably 55. It's either to cold or too hot.

Has anyone tried putting a thermostat like we use with the heat sources for our tortoises on a fridge?

 

[Alex and the Redfoot]

I figured this might be the place to ask about brumating hognoses. Mostly trying to fight the fridge and get the temps right. I just can't get the fridge to stay between 50-69, preferably 55. It's either to cold or too hot.

Has anyone tried putting a thermostat like we use with the heat sources for our tortoises on a fridge?

There are cooling thermostats. Yet check that they have a "cooling delay" function - this will prevent from turning on compressor too frequently: many short on/off cycles can quickly kill a compressor. I think, such delay is built-in in fridge thermostat and this can be a culprit of temperature swings. Do you have water bottles in a fridge? They provide some thermal inertia and help to keep temperatures stable.

 

[StuartMonifieth]

Every fall we get bombarded here on the forum with all sorts of questions and problems regarding hibernation and tortoises "slowing down" for winter. The purpose of this thread is to talk about all aspects of this subject, to dispel some of the myths and mysteries, and give a "how to" list of instructions for people who want to do it. Hopefully, this thread will answer the vast majority of questions that we commonly encounter, but further questions are welcome, and more detailed explanation is always available for the asking.

Hibernation? Mammals hibernate. Its a process that involves burning fat stores to survive cold weather. I've been misusing the term for decades and didn't really care because everyone knew I meant. @Markw84 was kind enough to explain it in more detail and correct my ignorant mistake after all these years. Reptiles, including our temperate species of tortoises, do NOT hibernate. They brumate. Brumation involves different bodily processes than hibernation. Its a fascinating subject and I encourage anyone interested to dive deeper into it, but "brumation" is the correct term for what our tortoises do.

Tropical species like sulcatas, red foots, and star tortoises for example, do NOT brumate. Leaving one of these outside without a temperature controlled shelter during a North American winter is cruel and often fatal if temps drop low enough for long enough. You can get away with it in some cases in south Florida and parts of Arizona, but it is not "good" for these animals to drop below certain temperatures, even if they can "survive" these un-naturally low temperatures. I have seen countless tortoises die this way because ignorant people tell other ignorant people that "Its fine... I've been doing it for years..", and then they have no explanation for why the tortoise died. I'll end this paragraph with this: Keep tropical tortoise species at tropical temperatures. Enough said.

On to temperate species... What does temperate mean? Stolen from "Wikipedia":
In geography, the temperate climates of Earth occur in the middle latitudes (23.5° to 66.5° N/S of Equator), which span between the tropics and the polar regions of Earth. These zones generally have wider temperature ranges throughout the year and more distinct seasonal changes compared to tropical climates, where such variations are often small and usually only have precipitation changes.

I learned about the difference between tropical animals and temperate animals back in grade school, high school, college, and in my pet store jobs too. If no one previously introduced you to these terms and concepts, well... you're welcome! No part of the USA is in the tropics. Not even the southern most of the Florida keys, and certainly not Chula Vista here in Southern CA, nor the Southern tip of Texas reaching down so low. I was in Ft. Meyers FL two years ago in March and when I came outside one morning during an unusual cold spell, the overnight temperature had dropped to 49 degrees. That is not tropical! The temperature there hardly ever gets that low, but it happens and the tortoise keepers there know how to work around it. Phoenix Arizona feels like you are living inside an oven in summer time, but even there it occasionally drops down to freezing overnight during the odd winter cold spell.

How does this relate to our tortoises? Many of the tortoise species we keep are not native to areas within the tropics. These are the "temperate" species, and the subject of this thread. Russians, all the hermanni, most of the greeks (arguably all of them...), Chersina, Chaco tortoises, and all of the North American Gopherus species. These species all experience four seasons in their native ranges. The temperature extremes certainly vary between say Russian tortoises from Kazakhstan at one extreme and Tunisian Greeks from Northern Africa at the other. Most of these species brumate in the wild in winter time. It is my opinion, based on my years of keeping all sorts of tortoises and other reptiles from all over the world, that species that brumate in the wild should also be brumated in our captive environments. I find this yields the best results, maintains good health, and is most "natural" for these species.

But what if I don't want to brumate my tortoise, for any reason? You don't have to. As far as we can tell, it does no harm to them, and it doesn't stop reproduction or shorten their lifespans. As far as we know... There have been forum members who kept their temperate species up, eating and awake all winter for many years in a row with no apparent ill effect. If there is some detriment to not brumating these species, it remains hidden to me. Having said that... Your tortoise may have other ideas, and even with your best efforts, they somehow "know" it is winter and that they should be "asleep". We don't know how they know this, but they know. Some of them are in windowless basements with full spectrum bright lighting, including strong summer-like UVB levels, and temperatures are maintained unchanged, but they still somehow know what time of year it is outside.

Here are steps to take if you don't want to brumate your temperate species:
1. Add bright LED lighting in the 5000-6500K color range. Lots of it. Make it look like daytime outside looks.
2. Set light timers to be on for 13-14 hours.
3. Bump all ambient temperatures up a bit.
4. Keep night temps warmer. Shoot for no lower than the 70s over night.
5. Pull the tortoise out of hiding and soak it often. Don't let it stay hidden in a cool hide box all day.
6. I usually run HO UV tubes for 2-3 hours mid day. To keep a tortoise up, I might bump them up to 6-8 hours a day.

Sometimes these efforts fail, and the tortoise is just determined to remain dormant, not eat, and sleep away the winter months. In that case, you may decide to switch tactics and brumate the tortoise.

Many people are afraid of brumation. There are lots of horror stories and many tortoises die during the process when it is not done correctly. It is my observation that in almost all of these cases, people did one thing or another wrong to cause the problem. I myself have brumated dozens of reptiles over dozens of years and had only one problem. The one time I had a problem it was because I broke my own rules and followed the advice of someone who didn't understand my climate, and I let my Argentine tegus hibernate on their own outside. This was a mistake because my winters are not cold enough, and not consistently cold at all. We have spells in January with warm sunny temps the 80s regularly. These warm spells wreak havoc with animals that are supposed to be brumating. When done correctly, I have a 100% success rate. That is not coincidence or luck. That is the result of understanding the basics of the process and following a few simple steps. The reason so many tortoises die and we hear so many sad stories is because most people leave them outside to fend for themselves during the wind down time, regardless of current weather and temperatures, OR the other big one is people letting them brumate outside subject to the cruel whims of Mother Nature through a harsh frozen winter. There are some climates that get cold and stay cold outside, but not anywhere in the Southern United States. Here are some issues with brumating them outdoors in their enclosures:
1. Temperature fluctuation, temps too cold, and temps too warm, are all major problems. Wild weather swings can kill them. In my area we can have night temps in the 20s, and two days later hit a high of 90 degrees in January.
2. Rats. A dormant tortoise can literally be chewed to the bone.
3. Ants in some areas. Ants go underground to escape the cold too. They still need food when they are down there. A cold sleeping tortoise is ant food.
4. Flooding from rain or melting snow. Many a tortoise has drowned in cold water in ts shelter or burrow.
5. Burrow collapse. In cold weather, the tortoise will not have the energy to dig out and they can suffocate.
6. Predators. Food is scarce in winter. Raccoons, coyotes and others can sniff out tortoises as food sources.
7. Pet dogs. Many people let the dog out into the back yard for potty breaks and due to the cold weather, they stay inside. Next to dehydration, dogs are the number one killers and maimers of tortoises. A dog can find, dig up, and demolish a tortoise in seconds.

None of these things can happen to them indoors in controlled conditions, or outdoors in some sort of structure with the correct set up. For my way of doing it, the temperatures and conditions are completely controlled. The weather isn't much of a factor. With all the things that can go wrong, and all the uncertainty, I don't know why anyone would leave the tortoise to its own devices outside. Many people do though. Some people who are skilled and experienced at it, and know their own area and climate well, have the ability to make it work year after year. Until it doesn't work one year. Most of the people who do it this way will have lots of stories about the ones they lost. I don't lose any of them. I only have one sad story and its because I did it 'their way" that one time.

I'm frequently asked: How do they survive in the wild? 1. Many don't. 2. Your back yard is not the wild. In the wild tortoises have hundreds of square miles of territory to scout out and look for just the right conditions to dig in and survive the winter. They need the right soil type, the right slope, a slope facing the right direction, the right vegetation, etc... Many tortoise species, like our CA desert tortoises make long deep burrows and stay way down underground where temperatures are cool and stable, unlike the surface.

Another big point of contention is the age or size at which a tortoise should first brumate. Many sources say don't do it for the first year, or the first three years, or the first five years. Why not? They all do it in the wild. Winter happens in the wild every single year, even the year they hatch. Again, if left outside in some sort of above ground shelter or burrow, they are not likely to survive. If prepared for brumation correctly, kept at the correct temperature, and brought out of brumation correctly, they all survive and thrive. I do this with all temperate baby lizards, snakes, turtles and tortoises their first year and every year. Bert Langerwurf, "The Lizard King", told me, "if you don't hibernate Argentine tegus their first year and every year, they will never reproduce." I never tested this theory, but he did and firmly believed it. Failure to brumate doesn't seem to stop our beloved tortoise species from reproducing, but I have to believe it does have endocrinological effects. I don't skip brumation for any temperate reptile unless I have some reason to suspect they are unhealthy or unfit for it in some way. I don't see bruamtion as some big monumental scary thing. Its just a normal easy annual process that all temperate reptiles engage in to survive a cold winter.

FIRST AND FOREMOST: MAKE A DECISION!
Either you are going to brumate your tortoise, or you are not. This is a deliberate process, not something that just sort of happens. Either way is fine, but some limbo area in between is NOT fine. Many times the tortoise slows down, gets less active, stops eating, and people just leave them sitting there in an indoor enclosure at room temperature. This is not okay. This is not brumation. Likewise, leaving them outside to fend for themselves as winter approaches is not okay either. The weather can and does change drastically day by day in Fall. It could be too warm or too cold, If they are just sitting outside subjected to these extremes while trapped in our small enclosures. It can be disastrous in many ways. We have brought these animals into our captive environments and we must help them to survive and thrive in these foreign environments. Either wake that tortoise up using the steps listed a few paragraphs earlier in this thread, or follow these next steps and begin the process of preparing the tortoise for brumation. YOU decide if your tortoise is going to brumate, or not, and plan accordingly. Make this decision by late summer and start taking the right steps for which ever way you want to go.

How to prepare a tortoise for brumation:
1. Bring them down gradually. I find about one month to be just right to get them ready for a winter slumber. It could be condensed into two or three weeks, or extended to six weeks, but somewhere around four weeks works best in my experience.
2. Make sure their gut is empty BEFORE dropping temps or shortening days. Two weeks of no food with the normal warm temps should do it. This should illustrate why letting them do this on their own outside isn't safe. They need to be fasted for two weeks while the temperatures and light duration stays "normal". What happens if the weather turns cold three days into the fast? What happens if there is a warm spell and they keep eating outside while we want them to be fasting? We have to have control of the lighting and temperatures to some degree. Indoors is the obvious solution, but a temperature controlled night box with a heat lamp outside can make it work too. If we control the temperatures, it does't matter what the weather does. I set my night boxes to stay around 65F overnight for these first two weeks of fasting. If the weather is warm and sunny, they control their own basking temperature. If the weather is cold and overcast, I set the basking light inside the night box on its timer, so they can warm up to operating temperature, digest the food in their gut, and get it moving out. After two weeks of fasting at warm temps, I start dropping the thermostat setting every other day and running the basking lamps less and less each day. After two weeks of cooling which comes after two weeks of fasting at warmed temps, they are ready to be placed into their brumation container and dropped to the correct temperature for the species.
3. Make sure they are well hydrated by soaking them frequently in the days and weeks before and after brumation. Soak early and often. This goes for all species.
4. Make sure the temperature is consistent and cold enough for the entire brumation time. 38-39F for Russians, 49-50F for DTs. 45ish for Greeks, hermanni and Chersina. How do you do this outside? Everywhere in North America and Europe has highly variable temperatures all winter long.
5. Don't let them brumate outside in a self dug burrow in your backyard. NOT safe! Don't do it in your basement, unless the temps are stable and correct for your species. What about in the closet? Does your closet in your house stay a consistent 38-45 degrees all winter long? Mine sure doesn't. Use a thermometer.

More notes to consider:
1. How long to brumate? In most cases, 8 weeks is enough and 16 weeks is not too long. I tend to go shorter for babies, and longer for larger adults, but this varies. On average, I do 12-14 weeks for adult animals. There is a wide margin of error available here. There is no "set" time for this.
2. When do I start this process? This may vary with your climate, but I usually feed them up good and soak frequently in October, and begin the fast in November. Keep soaking during the fast. I finish the cooling process and start the actual brumation around the beginning of December. It is okay to deviate from this general timeline. You should be controlling the temperature through al of this.
3. When do I bring them out of brumaton? Mine sleep all December, January, and February. I start watching for a long warm sunny spell in the 10 day forecast in March. If it stays cold longer than usual, I might leave them until we get closer to April. If we have a warm February and March is warm and sunny early on, I wake them earlier. I let the weather influence this decision, but I still control the temperatures throughout.
4. What sort of container do I brumate them in? I like plastic shoe boxes. I use some of whatever substrate they are already used to, and I keep if very lightly damp. Not wet, but not dry and dusty either. I make the substrate 3-4 inches deep. You can drill holes around the top, but this isn't necessary as they are not air tight.
5. How do I keep the temperature constant and consistent? Use a fridge. Full size fridges are the best way and most reliable. Mini fridges tend to not hold a consistent temp very well. Your thermometer will be your guide. A few years ago, I had an observation with my Chersina's outdoor insulated night box. Much like my swimming pool in winter, the well insulated night box remained at a stable temperature that was an average of the day time high and night time low. 65 degree days and 35 degree nights held a box temp of 48-50 with little change day to day. I let my Chersina brumate outside the last few years this way and it worked very well. During winter warm spells I had to put some ice bottles in the box a few times, far from the tortoise and where they couldn't be reached, but the temp stayed very consistent even when we had these hot spells or cold spells too. There are many variables involved and ultimately your thermometers are the only way to get a reliable answer on whether or not something like this will work for you and your tortoise, but it CAN work for some people. For someone who lives where it is much colder than here, a heat source could be set to 40-45 degrees, depending on the needs of your species, so that the insulated night box never gets too cold. A well built insulated box protects them from temperature extremes, predators, inclement weather, and you don't have to buy or run a fridge. If you can get the right temperatures, this method can work for you. If not, the fridge method always works.
6. Fridges are not air tight, and neither are plastic shoe boxes. Your tortoise will not suffocate.
7. I don't weigh them or mess with them much during brumation. You can if you want to. I prefer to leave them alone.
8. How do I bring the tortoise out of brumation? When I see that March warm spell coming, I begin adjusting the thermostat up a couple of degrees each day. Usually the tortoise will start to move around within a few days. When I see tortoise activity as the temperature is slowly coming up, I'll move them into their night box at a similar temp to where they were in the fridge, and the next day I'll look for activity. If they are awake, I'll turn the heat lamp on and give them the opportunity to bask for a bit, and give them a lukewarm soak. I don't want to shock them with "hot" water, so this first soak is on the cool side, but they have to be active and moving first. I don't want a torpid sleepy tortoise to drown! They tend to come out of brumation quickly. After a day or two, mine are usually rearing to go. If all looks good, I will set the basking lamp to come on the next morning, and then on next morning, I go in and set the ambient temp back to 60-65 to keep it warmer over night. This is not scientific. I do it by "feel" and by observing the tortoise's behavior. If they are moving slow and not with it, I do things gradually and take several days to warm them back up. If they are wide awake and ready to resume living, I let them. I usually offer food within two or three days of coming out of the brumation chamber, and they almost always eat it right away, as long as temps have been warm enough and they've had time to "wake".
9. What if I decided not to brumate, but my tortoise had other ideas and is insistent? That is okay. Do the two week fast and soaks with the warm temps and basking lamps still on, followed by the two week cooling period, and then brumate them for as long as you can. Even 4 weeks of brumation will often "re-boot" their brain and get them going again after a suitable gradual warm up. You may also decide to wait to wake them until well into April to give them more time since you started late. All of the above is fine and works.
10. What if I decided to brumate, but this darn tortoise just refuses and keeps scratching at the sides of the brumation container? This is okay too. Wake him up and keep him up all winter. Have an indoor enclosure set up with the correct heating and lighting, or if you live in a mild climate like mine, gradually bump the night box temp back up and kick on the heat lamp if the weather is not cooperating.

While I have kept brumating species awake through winter and I know others have successfully done it too, it is my opinion that species that brumate in the wild should also brumate in captivity. It just needs to be done correctly. Leaving them outside to figure it out and deal with the rigors of winter in the small spaces (like backyards) that we stick them in, is not my idea of doing it "correctly". I know far too many that have died this way. Don't let these horror stories from people who did not properly prepare, or brumate their animals in a safe, controlled way, scare you. Brumation is totally natural and totally safe when a few simple guidelines are observed.

For review, here is the correct care info for the temperate species we are discussing. You can see pics of the type of "night box" I mentioned here:

The Best Way To Raise Any Temperate Species Of Tortoise

I chose the title of this care sheet very carefully. Are there other ways to raise babies and care for adults? Yes. Yes there are, but those ways are not as good. What follows is the BEST way, according to 30 years of research and experimentation with hundreds of babies of many species. What is...

tortoiseforum.org

As always, questions and conversation are welcome.

My two and half year old Hermanni tortoise has put on a lot of weight this year in Scotland so I have decided to put him into brumation this winter. Next month will see start of fasting then I need to reduce temperature. So far I have not used a thermostat so I need to buy a gadget. Do they simply switch the basking lamp on and off depending on the temperature or do they actually reduce the power f the lamp to bring down the temperature?

 

[Sdapsam]

I've read so much of this thread but sadly I don't have time to go through every post like I'd wish to, so I apologise if my question has been answered in it already.

I have an Eastern Hermanns tortoise who is 1 year and 2 months old, currently weighing 130 grams. I'm confident I finally got all the parameters of its vivarium correct in accordance with TTF advice, and it is healthy and active because of it. There are no signs of RI, its poops are normal, its routine is consistent, and I love it to death. The thought of putting it to sleep for a couple of months is a scary one! But I do want it to follow it's natural rhythm. @Tom I know that you said you would brumate your Hermanns regardless of age, given that they would have to do so every year if they were in the wild, but being a nooby tortoise owner I think i just need some concrete assurance that it would indeed be safe and correct to brumate my tortoise given the above information.

If so, would you suggest a 4 week brumation for it? Or would you go 6-8 weeks? Longer?

 

[Megatron's Mom]

There are cooling thermostats. Yet check that they have a "cooling delay" function - this will prevent from turning on compressor too frequently: many short on/off cycles can quickly kill a compressor. I think, such delay is built-in in fridge thermostat and this can be a culprit of temperature swings. Do you have water bottles in a fridge? They provide some thermal inertia and help to keep temperatures stable.

We put a few containers in it to test out if they would fit. I'll try a few water bottles too.
Thsnks

 

[Tom]

My two and half year old Hermanni tortoise has put on a lot of weight this year in Scotland so I have decided to put him into brumation this winter. Next month will see start of fasting then I need to reduce temperature. So far I have not used a thermostat so I need to buy a gadget. Do they simply switch the basking lamp on and off depending on the temperature or do they actually reduce the power f the lamp to bring down the temperature?

I usually use the same bulb, but reduce the time that it is on each day, after the two week fast with the light at normal hours. The house temp naturally drops this time of year too, so it all works pretty well in most cases.

 

[Tom]

I've read so much of this thread but sadly I don't have time to go through every post like I'd wish to, so I apologise if my question has been answered in it already.

I have an Eastern Hermanns tortoise who is 1 year and 2 months old, currently weighing 130 grams. I'm confident I finally got all the parameters of its vivarium correct in accordance with TTF advice, and it is healthy and active because of it. There are no signs of RI, its poops are normal, its routine is consistent, and I love it to death. The thought of putting it to sleep for a couple of months is a scary one! But I do want it to follow it's natural rhythm. @Tom I know that you said you would brumate your Hermanns regardless of age, given that they would have to do so every year if they were in the wild, but being a nooby tortoise owner I think i just need some concrete assurance that it would indeed be safe and correct to brumate my tortoise given the above information.

If so, would you suggest a 4 week brumation for it? Or would you go 6-8 weeks? Longer?

I do all my baby temperate species for 12 weeks. 4-8 is better than none, so do however many you feel comfortable with. When it's done right, they are not active and the number of weeks doesn't really matter. I've done 16 weeks with no problems, and I've done 4 weeks with no problems, for all ages and sizes. Lizards, snakes, and tortoises.