- Outdoor housing: Safety from attack by predators.Rats,foxes,dogs and even large birds can attack and kill tortoises. Juveniles are at particular risk. Ensure no potential predator can ever gain access to your tortoise. Juvenile pens are best covered by strong mesh.Attacks by pet dogs kill dozens of tortoises every year.Even normally well behaved dogs may suddenly attack a tortoise without warning.It is best to allow no contact at all between dogs and tortoises. A dry, well-drained substrate that helps prevent shell and respiratory infections. Shade to prevent overheating in hot weather. Shelter from rain and cold in bad weather. Sufficient space to permit normal behaviour and adequate exercise. All pens should offer a range of micro habitats including shady plants, rocks, open basking areas and a good selection of edible vegetation. Toxic plants should be excluded from all tortoise enclosures.Ideally,these habitats will provide a variety of slopes and contours as tortoises should not be restricted to flat surfaces exclusively. In addition, contoured surfaces, especially if accompanied by strategically placed rocks and vegetation, are of great help in allowing a tortoise to get onto its feet if it accidentally turns over. On flat surfaces they will find that very difficult and stressful. It can even be dangerous if they become inverted in full sunshine on a hot day, and death can occur from overheating rapidly in such cases. Secure perimeters to prevent tortoises climbing or burrowing out, or predators burrowing in. Many tortoises are excellent climbers, and others can dig deep burrows very quickly. Burying a strong wire mesh beneath the enclosure is highly advisable in such cases. Take special care in corners, which are often implicated in escapes. All perimeter walls should be at least twice as high as the largest tortoise is long, and it is best if all perimeters are completely opaque and solid, as tortoises will spend hour trying to get through any barrier that they can see through. Enclosures can be constructed of a variety of materials. Concrete blocks, stone, brick or treated timbers are all suitable. For smaller tortoises and juveniles, ready made items such as children’s sandpits can be easily adapted to provide very secure and attractive.
- Indoor Housing: If the indoor housing fails to provide adequate space,or if temperature ranges and ventilationare inadequate,tortoises will become highly stressed and far more likely to succumb to respiratory and other serious infections. It is therefore extremely important that the accommodation employed meets all the animal’s critical physiological and environmental needs.The least satisfactory form of housing for Mediterranean tortoises indoors in the opinion of the Tortoise Trust consists of enclosed glass‘fish-tank’ or reptile style vivaria as used for snakes or lizards. The main problems with such units are the high cost for the very limited floor space provided,their weight and fragility,the typically poor ventilation and temperature gradients that can be achieved, and the fact that tortoises really do not respond well (as mentioned previously) to barriers that they can see through.Given that there are far better options available, we see no reason at all why this type of enclosure should be used with Mediterranean tortoises. Tortoises kept in such units often display high levels of stress, are frequently lethargic, and have far higher rates of respiratory and developmental problems than animals reared in more spacious and better ventilated enclosures. By far the most satisfactory type of indoor housing for juveniles and small tortoises is what is known as the ‘tortoise table’ design.
- Feeding: The general requirement of Mediterranean tortoises is for a high fibre, low protein, low fat, low carbohydrate, low sugar and calcium rich diet. In practice, this means avoiding completely items such as peas, beans, cat or dog food, high levels of fruit that the tortoise would not come across in the natural environment.The correct diet for Mediterranean tortoises is based around a good variety of green leaf vegetation and flowers.This is what they eat in the wild and what their digestive systems are optimised for. Some highly dangerous feeding recommendations have unfortunately appeared in books and on websites. You really need to be extremely careful when designing a diet for captive tortoises.They are very sensitive animals and are highly susceptible to developing growth abnormalities as a result of incorrect nutrition. We urge you to research this topic for yourself and to seek advice from reputable tortoise organisations, many of which have extensive guidance available on this subject. The Tortoise Trust has very detailed technical and practical articles on feeding tortoises of all species on our website. Because they grow quite rapidly, and are developing their bone structure in the process, juvenile tortoises are exceptionally likely to suffer serious consequences from dietary mismanagement.
- Price:
USD- 50-1200
BP- 15-752
Other tortoise species:
Sulcata Tortoise
Box Tortoise
Leopard Tortoise
Hermanns Tortoise