Hello,
This is my 1st post and I am in no way a tortoise expert and would very much like some advice before I take the plunge and get mine and my son's 1st tortoises.
If I start off by giving you a little background information 1st:
My nine year old son has been crazing me to get him a tortoise for years now. I myself am very keen on herpetology and have had many different reptiles growing up and we currently have 2 lovely leopard gecko's.
I promised my son on his tenth birthday, if he was good and could prove he could look after and be responsible for the gecko's I would seriously think about getting a pair of tortoises.
His birthday is coming up fast now (in January) and he has been good to his word and kept very good care of the Gecko's so its time to start thinking about getting ready to receive our Tortoises.
Obviously these would be family pets and as with all of our pets we would keep a very close eye on the children ( I have a 6 year old daughter as well) when they were handling the tortoises.
That's the background bit out of the way and now for the question:
We would want to keep the tortoises in the house for now over the winter and would need an enclosure that we would keep the kid's out when we weren't able to keep an eye on them. Plus we have a dog and as I've read dog's like to think of tortoises as a nice chewy toy so we definitely need to make sure there was noway the dog could get anywhere near them.
I am a pretty good DIY'er and have been racking my brains how I could make an en closer that would fit this purpose and not look to much of an eye sore in the house. Then I looked out of the window and right in front of me was an old rabbit hutch we have had lying around.
On inspection it seems perfect to me for our pair of tortoises with a little bit of elbow grease and cleaning up wouldn't look to bad in the house either.
I've posted some pictures and would like some feedback and advice to whether this is in fact a good idea and how best to set it up for the tortoises.
The hutch is 2ft by 4ft and has two tiers connected by a little ramp. I like the idea of the two tiers as it doubles the space but i'm not apposed to stripping it completely out and starting from scratch.
Please have a look and any feedback would be much appreciated.
By the way we were thing about getting a pair of hermann tortoises.
This is my 1st post and I am in no way a tortoise expert and would very much like some advice before I take the plunge and get mine and my son's 1st tortoises.
If I start off by giving you a little background information 1st:
My nine year old son has been crazing me to get him a tortoise for years now. I myself am very keen on herpetology and have had many different reptiles growing up and we currently have 2 lovely leopard gecko's.
I promised my son on his tenth birthday, if he was good and could prove he could look after and be responsible for the gecko's I would seriously think about getting a pair of tortoises.
His birthday is coming up fast now (in January) and he has been good to his word and kept very good care of the Gecko's so its time to start thinking about getting ready to receive our Tortoises.
Obviously these would be family pets and as with all of our pets we would keep a very close eye on the children ( I have a 6 year old daughter as well) when they were handling the tortoises.
That's the background bit out of the way and now for the question:
We would want to keep the tortoises in the house for now over the winter and would need an enclosure that we would keep the kid's out when we weren't able to keep an eye on them. Plus we have a dog and as I've read dog's like to think of tortoises as a nice chewy toy so we definitely need to make sure there was noway the dog could get anywhere near them.
I am a pretty good DIY'er and have been racking my brains how I could make an en closer that would fit this purpose and not look to much of an eye sore in the house. Then I looked out of the window and right in front of me was an old rabbit hutch we have had lying around.
On inspection it seems perfect to me for our pair of tortoises with a little bit of elbow grease and cleaning up wouldn't look to bad in the house either.
I've posted some pictures and would like some feedback and advice to whether this is in fact a good idea and how best to set it up for the tortoises.
The hutch is 2ft by 4ft and has two tiers connected by a little ramp. I like the idea of the two tiers as it doubles the space but i'm not apposed to stripping it completely out and starting from scratch.
Please have a look and any feedback would be much appreciated.
By the way we were thing about getting a pair of hermann tortoises.