tortoise [ˈtɔːtəs]
noun;
any herbivorous terrestrial chelonian reptile of the family Testudinidae, of most warm regions, having a heavy dome-shaped shell and clawed limbs
The many new designs I now offer in my Etsy shop have brought forth a new wave of publicity for my tortoise cozies. With Christmas approaching, I find myself having to crochet 4-5 cozies every day to keep up with the influx of orders! (What a nice problem to have - I'm not complaining much!)
Reindeer cozy
Christmas tree cozy
Santa hat cozy
I know there are several other special features that have shown up lately, but here are a few.
Today's post is just for fun: The baby Marginated tortoises continue to thrive and grow - they are such a joy! Caring for baby tortoises definitely is more work than caring for adults or sub-adults... but these wee little treasures sure make up for it in cuteness. They are healthy, and active, and I have a feeling they will be big before I know it.
Bubbles, hatched Sept 8, 2013
First, here is Bubbles. She is the darker of the two babies, and she is actually a full month younger than Blossom (the lighter baby). She was just so huge when she hatched, that she slipped in with the older babies when the breeder offered me the batch to choose from. She was less than 2 weeks old when she arrived here.
Bubbles, hatched Sept 8, 2013
Bubbles is the darkest of all the babies the breeder had, and she was 16g when I got her. She was 32g when I weighed her a week ago. I would be worried about her growing too quickly, but her growth is sooooo smooth. I am curious to see how big she ends up being as an adult!
She won't fit in my hand like this for long!
Bubbles is very friendly, and when it comes to food, downright greedy. She will climb over the other two to get to a leaf she wants. She stomps through the water dish, climbs up and over the half-log hide, and then digs in really deep in the hot humid hide (which is a little rubbermaid shoebox, with a hole cut out for a door, filled with moist coconut coir and sphagnum moss).
Just a bit more cuteness for you to enjoy
Whenever I walk by the baby tank, Bubbles stomps up to the front to see if I am bringing any food. Oink!
Blossom, hatched Aug. 8, 2013
Blossom, the lighter of the Marginated babies, is doing really well, too. She is a little more shy, but she eats well, is active, loves to explore, and really loves to bask, bask, bask. She spends more time under the basking lamp than either of the other two - I have to make sure to mist her shell often to keep it from drying out (which can result in pyramiding).
Blossom, hatched Aug. 8, 2013
When I weighed her a week ago, she was 24g, which is smaller than Bubbles, but still an acceptable weight gain for a hatchling. Different tortoises grow at different rates. Her mother may have been younger and smaller, or her unusually light coloring may mean she is a bit of a genetic oddball. Only time will show. As long as her growth is steady, I am happy.
Blossom on the left, Bubbles on the right.
When keeping multiple tortoises, it is always important to make sure one is not bullying the other, and that one is not hogging the food, heat lamp, etc. - this is not the case with my 3 (so far). As they grow, I will continue to monitor them closely. Their enclosure is set up in our living room, so I see them all throughout the day.
Bubbles, with her nice round shell
I think it makes a big difference where in your home you keep your pets. If they are out of the way, it is easier to forget about them, to accidentally neglect them. We keep our critters in our living room, dining room, and entryway - places we pass by many times every day. We enjoy visiting the torts on our way past.
Blossom, looking cute and dainty
Walking past the tortoises, or being able to see them from the couch (or during the Summer, from the outdoor seating area) also has the advantage that we can see if there is trouble: if one of them flips over, or one is being bullied, or any number of other things that can happen. Of course there is the fact that they are just plain fun to watch...
Some day, I will have to hold each of them with two hands!
Have I mentioned that baby tortoises are just about the cutest thing ever?
Buttercup, hatched Thanksgiving day, 2012
Buttercup is doing wonderfully well, too. She will be a year old this month, and she has grown SO MUCH since I got her in July! She weighed 60g when I got her, and as of today, she weighs 112g! I love how domey her shell is becoming. She is spunky, and she definitely knows that I'm the food-bringer. When she sees me, she RUNS over to the feeding spot in the enclosure!
Her new growth is coming in very smoothly, and by the time she is an adult, I think the slight pyramiding from her first 8 months (not with me) will be barely noticable.
Buttercup will probably be bigger than my hand by this time next year!
Baby tortoises are cute, but I also really look forward to watching them grow into big(ish), majestic animals. Some day I'll be able to post before/after pictures, showing them as tiny hatchlings and fully grown adult beauties!
Did you know that even when the temperature outside is only about 70 degrees, you can still let your tortoise(s) spend some time soaking up natural sunlight? When the air temperature is 70, the ground temperature in the sunlight is usually much warmer. Getting natural UVB light is SO important for a tortoise's health...
Getting some good, healthy natural sunlight
Our tortoise garden is mostly shaded this time of year, so I have found that putting the tortoises into a kiddie pool for a few hours on a sunny day works well. I just move the pool around the garden to keep it in the sunshine.
It looks a little make-shift... but it was still healthy for the torts
Out of curiosity I measured the temperatures:
Air temp: 72 degrees F.
Ground temp in the shade: 59 degrees F.
Ground temp in the sun: 80 degrees F.
Temperature on the tortoise's shell: 89 degrees F.
It is DEFINITELY warm enough for the Russian tortoises at such temperatures!
Have you let your tortoises spend any time outside lately?
Allegra, our redfoot tortoise, gave us quite a scare a few weeks ago. You may remember that she came to us from a sub-ideal situation. The enclosure she came with was covered in dryer lint, dust, and dog hair, and she was very dry. I let her spend every day that was warmer than 75 degrees outside in a safe enclosure, and I misted her often throughout the day. Good food and good hydration and warmth seemed to help her, but she spent a lot more time sitting around than I would have expected.
Allegra, alive and well, thankfully
Then, one day in early September, we had 104-degrees F weather (40 degrees C). I made sure she had some shade available, and I set up the hose to constantly mist half of her enclosure. She drank, grazed, and seemed to LOVE it. And all of a sudden, stuff started to come out of her back end.
That's right. I'm going to go there. Someone has to.
Soooooo. Are you curious what started coming out of Allegra's back end yet? No? Sorry, you get to find out anyway: DOG HAIR AND DRYER LINT.
Now, to give you a visual, this wasn't just a little blob. It was GOBS and GOBS. Over the course of the afternoon, more and more and more just kept coming out. Because I wanted to be able to quantify it (and since I needed to pick it up out of her enclosure anyway so she wouldn't eat it again), I put it into a dixie cup. It FILLED the dixie cup. Keep in mind that Allegra is not quite 6 inches long, which means there really isn't a whole lot of room inside her. And yet, she had a whole dixie cup of dryer lint and dog hair inside her intestines.
Are you getting a little bit of a gaggy feeling in the back of your throat yet? Sorry. Believe me, it was a lot more gross in real life than it sounds like in words... because I'm leaving out a description the smell that came with it. Just think of how terrible it must have felt for her to have that stuff inside her for weeks (or months) on end.
Much happier now!
Now, I am sure you are wondering why I am such a weirdo in the world I would share this with you.
Well, for one, because I am REALLY relieved that Allegra passed the intestinal blockage. She could have died - and I know that many tortoises do die from ingesting non-edible things. The other reason is that I want to help you prevent the same thing from happening to your tortoise(s).
Still lumpy and bumpy... but much more active!
People often ask me why I don't just let my tortoises roam the house during the cold season when I bring them inside. "Wouldn't they be much more happy? Just think of all the space they would have, and you wouldn't need to bother with all the tortoise tables all over your house!" My answer is always a resounding NO.
In fact, except for very very rare occasions, I don't let my tortoises roam on the floor, even for a short time. There are several reasons:
1.) I have kids who like to be on the floor. I don't really want my floor to be contaminated with tortoise poopgerms.
2.) I don't want to lose one (or several) of my tortoises.
3.) I don't want the tortoise to ingest a toy or other item left on the ground.
4.) I don't want the tortoise to get stuck or stepped on or kicked.
5.) The floor is very drafty, even in a well-insulated house. We keep our house heated to 68-70 degrees during the winter, but the floor is realistically probably closer to 50 degrees. If the floor is chilly enough to make me want to wear warm socks, it's definitely not warm enough for a tortoise. Even if I were to provide a heating pad or a basking light, the tortoise(s) would spend more time getting chilly than I want them to.
6.) Even if when I vacuum 2x per week, we end up with little furry dust bunnies and cobwebs and hair tumbleweeds under the dressers and in the corners. I would hate for a tortoise to eat that stuff, or breathe it, and become sick.
7.) Our dog lives outside, but sometimes in the winter he gets to spend the night indoors if it is especially cold. I would hate for him to somehow get hold of one of my tortoises and chew on it.
8.) Our home is all on one level, but if we lived in a house with stairs, I would worry that the tortoise(s) would crash to their death.
There are surely many more reasons why not to let a tortoise (even a large one) roam your house. A tortoise belongs in a safe, enclosed area - a tortoise table, a tortoise garden, a greenhouse. If you have the space, you MIGHT be able to alter a room in such a way that your tortoise can safely live there... but the majority of us don't just have spare rooms, do we?
Now, even if your tortoise is kept in a tortoise table (which Allegra was), please make sure that it does not get covered in dog hair, dryer lint and who knows what else... tortoises are odd little creatures that like to taste test all kinds of things. Sometimes they will decide the oddest things taste good enough to re-visit and take a second (and third and fourth) bite of...
Anyway. I hope this blog post might save a tortoise or several...
(Aren't you glad I didn't post a picture of that dixie cup, by the way?!)
It is hard to imagine, but I have crocheted more than 500 tortoise cozies and yard finders since the beginning of this year. The orders keep on coming, and I love the creative challenge when clients ask me for a new design. Here are two of my new designs:
The Shamrock yard finder. After all, you don't want someone to pinch your tortoise for not wearing green on St. Patty's day, right?!
The Shamrock yard finder
The Valentine. Because as long as you feed her, your tortoise will always be your Valentine, no matter what.
The Valentine yard finder
My Etsy shop MossyTortoise looks terribly empty right now, because for the last few months, my orders have almost exclusively been custom orders. If you would like me to make you a tortoise cozy, just swing by my Etsy shop, and click on the 'Request Custom Order' button on the left side. Once you've contacted me via MossyTortoise, I will send you measuring instructions.
You might remember me mentioning that our tortoise family is complete. You might also know that I'm a huge sucker for tiny baby tortoises.
Just out of the box - one still has the red nail polish mark from the breeder
When I got Buttercup (the almost-yearling Marginated tortoise) I knew that at some point down the line I wanted to get more, to form a small breeding group eventually. Well, to make a long story short, an opportunity came up that it would have been folly to pass up, and now we have two more baby Marginated tortoises.
Parmesan Cheese? Nope, baby tortoises!
These two tiny girls were shipped to me, and arrived safely this morning. The FedEx guy placed the box on the ground with the 'This way UP' arrow prominently pointing DOWN, but the tortoises were so well packaged that they were just fine.
Sorry it's a little blurry - I was too excited to get them out!
I know that I call Buttercup a 'baby' tortoise, and she is. But these wee creatures are truly BABY tortoises. They are about 1 and 3/4 inches long (less than 4.5cm). Their tiny belly buttons have just healed over, and they only have one growth ring so far. They each weigh 16g - which is about 5x smaller than Buttercup. Can you imagine that they will grow 425x larger in the course of their life (to about 6800g or up to 15lbs)?!
Buttercup looks like a giant now!
I refer to the babies as 'girls' because they were incubated at temperatures that should result in females. Tortoises, like many other reptiles, are sexed based on the temperature the eggs are kept at, did you know that? It will likely be another 5 or more years before we know for sure though.
Meet Blossom (L) and Bubbles (R).
I got to choose these two out of several clutches. They are unrelated, and I picked the darkest of all the babies, and the lightest of all the babies. It will be interesting to see what they look like as adults. Marginated tortoises don't differ much visually, once they are grown up, but I am sure we will be able to tell them apart.
Exploring a little
After the wee Marginated babies had soaked, I set them into the enclosure to bask. They moved around and explored, one of them even nibbled on the weeds I offered, and then they dug themselves into the spaghnum moss of their hot humid hide.
I provide artificial UVB for them indoors, but once it was warm enough outside, I also brought them out and let them explore the safe little planted baby tortoise garden for a few hours. Natural sunlight is so good for them, and I hope they will be off to a good start for years of nice smooth growth. I know their breeder gave them the best start a baby could possibly hope for.
Today I would like to write about an important lesson that I learned the hard way:it is not a good idea to keep 2 tortoises together(yes, there are exceptions).
When tortoise owners ask me if I think they should get a second tortoise, I tell them: only if they plan to get a second enclosure. Then I advise them to spend the money on spoiling their 1 tortoise first: build a big outdoor enclosure, enlarge the indoor enclosure, upgrade the lighting. Put some money into savings for emergency vet care (you'll need it at some point during your tortoise's 80 or so years of life!).
...."But she's so.... lonely!"
Believe me, I've been there. Humans seek companionship, as do many other mammals. We like to project our own feelings onto our pets, and so, we assume that our tortoise would be happier with a 'friend.' Please know that I am not judging you for wanting to get another tortoise. Getting a little 'friend' for a tortoise can be so tempting. The truth is: (except for a few species like redfoot torts, aldabras, or pancake torts), most tortoises are loners in the wild. They roam several acres, and only occasionally encounter other tortoises. If a tortoise encounters another, they will fight, mate, or both. Then they wander apart again (or one is chased away by the other).
When thinking about getting another tortoise, a person often thinks they will be best buddies...
If you are thinking of getting your pet tortoise a 'buddy' then I hope you read my story first, and put some serious thought into your decision after reading about my experience. Keeping 2 tortoises together (especially of the testudo species) is NOT a cake walk.
In reality, it will look like this... *BITE!* ... a lot of the time.
If you get a male and a female, after much biting and bullying, there will be plenty of mating too. More than there would ever be in nature. Enough mating to kill the female.
No comment.
If the female can't get away from the male, he will seek her out again and again (more than in nature, since there she CAN get away). My friend rescued a tortoise female earlier this year whose vent was terribly infected and torn and chafed and ripped from all the mating. It took her a long time to heal.
The infected, oozing, puss-filled tail of my friend's rescued female that was mated too much. (I'm posting a small picture just so it's not too gross)
Here is how I learned my lesson:
I started out with one female Russian tortoise, Timmy. After I had her for a few years, I decided I'd like to get a second tortoise. A few knowledgeable people on the tortoise forums advised against this. They warned me that tortoises, especially the testudo species (to which Russian tortoises belong) are very territorial. They told me that the tortoises would compete for food, for the basking spot, for space. They told me that they would bite and ram, and one would become stressed, hurt, and might die.
"Timmy needs a friend. My tortoises will be different and won't fight."
For some reason, I was convinced that 'my' tortoises would be different. I set up a my enclosure with lots of site barriers. I soon adopted a little male, Roz. For the first 18 or so months, everything went well. There were NO signs of aggression, both tortoises ate together, basked together, slept together. Yay! My tortoises were the exception!
Wait. What?! My male is biting my female?! Oh no!
Then one day, Roz matured. Roz discovered that he was a rapist little man-tortoise with needs and urges. Roz discovered that he didn't like sharing his food. Roz discovered that he could boss Timmy around, in spite of being half her size. Roz became a big, mean, bossy, biting bully. Timmy lost scales on her legs, and even got a bite wound on her face once. Roz got to spend a lot of time in the time-out bin until I separated him permanently.
Watch this video of Roz bobbing his head at Timmy (which is territorial behavior), and then circling her and biting her:
In the wild, this is 'normal' courting behavior. However, in the wild, the female can get away! In captivity, while both tortoises were kept in the same enclosure, Roz wanted to mate with Timmy 15+ times each day. He spent his spare time bullying her away from the food or the basking spot. Timmy started to become withdrawn, and wanted to hide and sleep all the time. I separated the two, and she started eating again, thank goodness.
Now, the 'easy' solution would have been to re-home Roz. This, however, was not an option for me. I had made a commitment to care for him, and did not want to break this commitment. The 'harder' solution was to a) separate my male, b) build a larger enclosure, and c) get a little harem of female tortoises for him. It took me nearly a year to find females, since in the pet trade, most tortoises are male. I finally got Mila and Jill, and then Lady.
Roz and his harem, basking.
I know that some people will advise that two female tortoises will get along fine. I disagree: one will always be the underdog. At least for testudo species, if you want to keep multiple females together, you should get 3 or more. This way they are less likely to fight, and the bullying will be divided a little among them.
During the Summer, the tortoises happily (and peacefully) lived outside in the large tortoise garden I built them. They will be divided over several indoor tortoise tables for the winter.
They spread out over the entire tortoise garden, except to eat.
IF you decide you want more than 1 tortoise, please avoid keeping 2 males together, or 1 male and 1 female. Either 3 females (with LOTS of space) or 1 male and 3+ females might work... but even then, you may find yourself needing a degree in tortoise diplomatics!
IF you decide to keep multiple tortoises, please remember that the enclosure size must adjust accordingly for multiple tortoises! If the absolute minimum size for 1 tortoise is 2'x4', then each additional tortoise will need at least that much more space. As always, larger is better when it comes to tortoise enclosures!
Today I built our Russian tortoises a little tortoise house. Its purpose is to provide a spot that is generally drier and warmer in the mornings and more chilly days.
Jill is modelling the little house for me
It has real siding, and a slanted plexi glass roof, so the rain will run off. The total cost was $0, since these are all re-claimed materials. It doesn't look 'fancy' but it will work great, I think.
The plexi glass allows the sun to shine inside to warm the interior.
The inside of the shelter is fairly roomy - 18" x 13" - so all 5 torts can, in theory, fit in here. Because Russian tortoises are territorial little space hogs, only 2 or 3 will end up spending the night in here.
An added bonus of the plexi glass: I can peek inside at the torts!
In addition to this very slapped together rustic tortoise house, I'm also working on building a cold frame (like a small green house) that has polycarbonate siding. I got lucky at a nursery close-out sale and got a whole stack of odd-sized pieces for $5.
The tortoises got to eat a special treat today: my friend gave me a big bag of lettuce that had gone to seed in her garden, and therefore was too bitter for humans to eat.
Freshly bathed, and chowing down!
The tortoises seemed to think this stuff was candy. The scarfed it down like there was no tomorrow!
Look how 'domey' little Jill is getting. She is shiny from her bath.
Even little Jill, who is the smallest of the Russian torts, ate a sizeable portion, and then looked up at me, seemingly asking for more. I think she is actually going to end up growing to be a very large Russian tortoise. Just look at how tall her shell has gotten - now she just needs to catch up in length, too! I am keeping her separate from the other Russian tortoises for the cold season, because she got picked on too much last year, and I don't want to let that happen again.
Buttercup enjoyed a few leaves, too, along with a small aloe leaf.
Buttercup, our marginated tortoise, is growing beautifully, as well. She weighed in at 72g the other day, and her new growth continues to be healthy and smooth.
Our little Marginated tortoise got to meet another snail. It finally rained here, so there were quite a few in our garden - I think these are European snails. People are always surprised to see them in our area. Regardless, the design on this particular snail's shell looked really pretty, so before feeding it to our redfoot tortoise, I took a few pictures of it with on top of Buttercup.
Giving snails a ride makes me grumpy! (Or maybe that's just my face)
I found a nice sunny spot on a rock in your back yard that was the perfect staging area for these pictures. No flash or extra lighting was necessary.
Weeee!
Hopefully in the next year or so we will have some home-hatched Russian tortoise babies... which will start out about the same size as this snail!
Two beautiful shelled creatures...
On a side note, it is a real pain to rinse snail trail off of a tortoise shell. It's not quite water soluble, and kind of sticky. I don't put anything but water on Buttercup's shell, so I finally just scrubbed it a little with an old toothbrush.
The outdoor enclosure of my Russian tortoises is planted with a variety of weeds and other edible plants... but at this point in the year, a lot of the weeds have been grazed away. I end up having to collect food in our yard and my friends' yards every few days.
'We're not ready to eat yet. It's still too early'
Today when I fed the tortoises, the Russian torts all came over to the food pile, and then promptly all sat down facing away from each other. I quickly took a picture - they have gotten so used to having all the space of the tortoise garden that I think they were a little grumpy about the sudden proximity to each other!
All my tortoises love hibiscus flowers. Knowing this, I have planted 3 different varieties: a blueish purple 'Rose of Sharon', a perennial hibiscus (which dies back in the Fall, and comes back larger every Spring), and a hot pink bush variety, of which I forget the name.
Jill, going to town on some hibiscus blooms
The first blooms show up in mid July, and I usually get new ones through October. Tortoises can eat the leaves, as well as the flowers. I pick new ones every day and mix them into the greens. They are so nutritious!
If you end up with too many flowers, you can place them on a piece of paper and sun dry them. Then place them in a plastic bag, and crumble them over your tortoise's food in the Winter! With all the tortoises I have, I never end up having any left over...
Give me more!
I will write a post about healthy tortoise diet soon, since I have been receiving a lot of questions about what to feed.
My Russian tortoises get fed exclusively dark leafy greens, with the exception of flowers. I supplement with cuttlefish bone for a little extra calcium, and I sprinkle TNT powder on their food during the Winter. During the Summer I feel that they are getting enough of a variety in their food that it isn't necessary to add the TNT, especially since so much of their food comes from grazing in their outdoor enclosure, which is planted with a wide variety of weeds and tortoise-edible plants.
Nom nom nom
My front garden gets a lot of compliments, and I just love it when people walk by our house and stop to smell some flowers, or even to take a picture with their cell phones. My dirty secret is that a lot of what I grow in our garden is meant to be tortoise food. If it happens to look pretty, that is just an added bonus! :) I also intersperse edible plants such as cherry tomatoes, rhubarb, zucchini, squash etc. in my flowerbeds - we love eating the fresh veggies, and it looks nice.
