GreenFire719
Member
Hey guys! So I have had Zonder for two weeks now and you can already see major improvements in him. I don’t really see too many threads about “restoring” torts so I think I’m gonna keep this thread to post progress on him as he gets better.
Getting Zonder was a very quick turnaround from when I heard about him, like 24 hours and he was in the car coming home with me. A lady in one of my nearby neighborhoods posted about surrendering him to anyone who could take care of him, and I just so happen to be sent the post. He was in unknown shape, just said to be a Sulcata in the post. A lot of the replies were to take him to turtle rescues groups in the state that I knew wouldn’t take him in (for native species). I messaged the lady and asked about his health, age, etc and she was pretty happy it seemed to have someone willing to take him. Now she couldn’t send any pictures of him so it was kinda a mystery of what state he would be in.
She agreed to let me pick him up the next day with all of his equipment and 15 minutes before I showed up, I finally got my first look at him.
I think my first reaction was to be horrified at his living conditions. She had him for at least 8 months and he lived in a hollowed out cabinet with a thin layer of hay for substrate. He also had a very overgrown beak, visibly dehydrated, and nails that definitely needed trimmed. Oh, and also the fact that he was not even a Sulcata but a Russian tortoise. This poor guy wasn’t getting proper care as a Sulcata, so I knew for sure he wasn’t getting proper care for a Russian either.
The lady herself was very polite and seemed really happy that I came to get him, since she knew he wasn’t getting proper care. Her mom was a reptile hoarder of sorts from what I understood and they took him in after her friend had to move out of state and couldn’t bring him with. Within 10 minutes, I was walking out the door with his cabinet, his dishes and lighting equipment, food pellets, and him wrapped snuggly in a towel inside a box.
The first thing I did when I got home was start up a warm soak for him to try and rehydrate him. I’m pretty sure in his entire life he had never been given a soak but he enjoyed every minute of it.
He probably was in there for almost two hours before he started trying to climb out (he got a warm water change every 15 minutes or so) and he was just glopping up water. The reason why he was so dehydrated beside the substrate and the improper temperatures he had for months was because of this:
This tiny leaf dish was his water bowl, the poor guy could dip his tail in but nothing else, so what little water he got didn’t help him much.
As he soaked, I went to go set up his tank for the night and put some actual soil in for the poor guy to dig in. The heat source she was using for him wasn’t terrible, she had a CHE bulb in his lamp to get heat but no uvb source whatsoever. Oh, and the bulb she was using in the lamp was definitely a fire hazard since the lamp didn’t support the wattage needed. He now has a proper lamp and light but for a few nights he didn’t have any. Luckily he’s upstairs in my house so it stay at just about 80 degrees upstairs during the day and 77 at night so he wasn’t too cold. He also got taken outside supervised during the day for about an hour to get some of that natural UVB.
I did manage to clip his beak just a bit that night too, not a lot though since he doesn’t need more stress in adjusting to his new surroundings.
A small improvement but a much needed one for him. Over the past two weeks I’ve been slowly clipping more and more off his beak, taking just a bit off every few days. The difference in him now is pretty drastic.
(He had a mustache for a minute in this photo)
So it turned out he wasn’t able to open his mouth properly because of how overgrown his beak was, so as he was eating some greens, the sides of his beak kinda just popped out like a busted hinge. I promptly clipped his “mustache” off and he went on to completely devour as much dandelion his little face could fit. His beak still needs trimmed more but currently it looks like this:
Look at that handsome face!
The next step in his recovery is to get him a bigger enclosure with plants and rocks for him to trample, whether I end up building him a tort table or getting a raised flowerbed to house him in. Currently he is still in the cabinet with cardboard sidings surrounding him to keep him less stressed and make sure he can’t climb out. It’s not the best but he has room in it to walk around and fit his proper dishes and a hide log. Unfortunately I can’t house him outside because of my dogs (well one dog really doesn’t like him or Io my eastern boxie) so he has to be housed in my room away from the other dogs.
I’m hoping to go to Lowe’s this weekend and check out how much timber is compared to a flowerbed so by next week he can be in a bigger enclosure. I have already ordered some seed mix to start growing for him with clover and orchid grass and he’s been happily eating dandelion greens like spaghetti I got from Harris Teeter. It hasn’t started to sprout yet but there’s also chia seeds I planted into his temporary enclosure for him to munch on.
I will keep everyone posted on how Zonder is doing and how his new enclosure is coming along [emoji4] If you guys want to suggest some good plants to put in his enclosure I’d be appreciative of it, preferably something edible like African violets that I can swap in and out. Thanks guys! [emoji173]️
Getting Zonder was a very quick turnaround from when I heard about him, like 24 hours and he was in the car coming home with me. A lady in one of my nearby neighborhoods posted about surrendering him to anyone who could take care of him, and I just so happen to be sent the post. He was in unknown shape, just said to be a Sulcata in the post. A lot of the replies were to take him to turtle rescues groups in the state that I knew wouldn’t take him in (for native species). I messaged the lady and asked about his health, age, etc and she was pretty happy it seemed to have someone willing to take him. Now she couldn’t send any pictures of him so it was kinda a mystery of what state he would be in.
She agreed to let me pick him up the next day with all of his equipment and 15 minutes before I showed up, I finally got my first look at him.
I think my first reaction was to be horrified at his living conditions. She had him for at least 8 months and he lived in a hollowed out cabinet with a thin layer of hay for substrate. He also had a very overgrown beak, visibly dehydrated, and nails that definitely needed trimmed. Oh, and also the fact that he was not even a Sulcata but a Russian tortoise. This poor guy wasn’t getting proper care as a Sulcata, so I knew for sure he wasn’t getting proper care for a Russian either.
The lady herself was very polite and seemed really happy that I came to get him, since she knew he wasn’t getting proper care. Her mom was a reptile hoarder of sorts from what I understood and they took him in after her friend had to move out of state and couldn’t bring him with. Within 10 minutes, I was walking out the door with his cabinet, his dishes and lighting equipment, food pellets, and him wrapped snuggly in a towel inside a box.
The first thing I did when I got home was start up a warm soak for him to try and rehydrate him. I’m pretty sure in his entire life he had never been given a soak but he enjoyed every minute of it.
He probably was in there for almost two hours before he started trying to climb out (he got a warm water change every 15 minutes or so) and he was just glopping up water. The reason why he was so dehydrated beside the substrate and the improper temperatures he had for months was because of this:
This tiny leaf dish was his water bowl, the poor guy could dip his tail in but nothing else, so what little water he got didn’t help him much.
As he soaked, I went to go set up his tank for the night and put some actual soil in for the poor guy to dig in. The heat source she was using for him wasn’t terrible, she had a CHE bulb in his lamp to get heat but no uvb source whatsoever. Oh, and the bulb she was using in the lamp was definitely a fire hazard since the lamp didn’t support the wattage needed. He now has a proper lamp and light but for a few nights he didn’t have any. Luckily he’s upstairs in my house so it stay at just about 80 degrees upstairs during the day and 77 at night so he wasn’t too cold. He also got taken outside supervised during the day for about an hour to get some of that natural UVB.
I did manage to clip his beak just a bit that night too, not a lot though since he doesn’t need more stress in adjusting to his new surroundings.
A small improvement but a much needed one for him. Over the past two weeks I’ve been slowly clipping more and more off his beak, taking just a bit off every few days. The difference in him now is pretty drastic.
(He had a mustache for a minute in this photo)
So it turned out he wasn’t able to open his mouth properly because of how overgrown his beak was, so as he was eating some greens, the sides of his beak kinda just popped out like a busted hinge. I promptly clipped his “mustache” off and he went on to completely devour as much dandelion his little face could fit. His beak still needs trimmed more but currently it looks like this:
Look at that handsome face!
The next step in his recovery is to get him a bigger enclosure with plants and rocks for him to trample, whether I end up building him a tort table or getting a raised flowerbed to house him in. Currently he is still in the cabinet with cardboard sidings surrounding him to keep him less stressed and make sure he can’t climb out. It’s not the best but he has room in it to walk around and fit his proper dishes and a hide log. Unfortunately I can’t house him outside because of my dogs (well one dog really doesn’t like him or Io my eastern boxie) so he has to be housed in my room away from the other dogs.
I’m hoping to go to Lowe’s this weekend and check out how much timber is compared to a flowerbed so by next week he can be in a bigger enclosure. I have already ordered some seed mix to start growing for him with clover and orchid grass and he’s been happily eating dandelion greens like spaghetti I got from Harris Teeter. It hasn’t started to sprout yet but there’s also chia seeds I planted into his temporary enclosure for him to munch on.
I will keep everyone posted on how Zonder is doing and how his new enclosure is coming along [emoji4] If you guys want to suggest some good plants to put in his enclosure I’d be appreciative of it, preferably something edible like African violets that I can swap in and out. Thanks guys! [emoji173]️
