know anything about tortoises?Follow

So apparently our neighbors ditched their Russian Tortoise in our yard and told us we can keep it. great.

Hubbys out getting a tortoise container, pellets, vitamens etc is there anything else we should do?

Poor thing gobbled up 3 pieces of pineapple and was lapping at the water. Knowing our neighbors, he probably wasnt well cared for. :/

We wash our hands with soap after each time we touch him (I heard they have salmonella) and we are trying to locate a vet for him. I say him because he has the indentation on his lower shell that supposedly the males have for mounting the females...

Wow Nio, not everyone would be as concerned as you are. I have no knowledge of tortoises (save holding up traffic to help one across the road, did that once with an alligator too, gotta love SC). Lucky tortoise!!

Well.. I wouldn't say that.

I have a Russian Tortoise! They make great pets - they're usually friendly and they're relatively low maintenance. We've had ours for 5 years; my cousins owned her for 5-6 years before that but they didn't take the best care of her. Here's a picture of our setup:

http://img527.imageshack.us/img527/507/p5170143.jpg

If you're keeping it indoors, you'll want 2 lights for the tank - one regular 60 or 75W bulb to provide heat (should be around 80-90 degrees under the light, but there should be a cooler area of the tank as well), and one that emits UV-B rays. A UV-A light won't cut it; you need UV-B rays to simulate sunlight so they can get their vitamin D and prevent shell-rot. You can get a UV-B bulb that fits into a regular socket for around $20 from somewhere like Petco or Petsmart. The other things you need are a water dish and some form of substrate. The water dish should be big enough for the tortoise to climb entirely into but not too deep, since they like to sit in the dish to soak themselves. I usually see mine doing this about once a week. If you don't have a large enough water dish, it's important to take them out of the tank and soak them in ~1 inch of luke-warm water about once a week, since they need to absorb water through their cloaca to stay fully hydrated.

For substrate, you can use a mixture of soil and sand from outside if you know it hasn't been chemically treated in any way; otherwise you can buy pre-packaged substrate from a pet store. We often use Bed-A-Beast, which comes as a small brick and expands when you add water to it, mixed with sand or cork bark.

If you live in a more temperate climate, you can keep it outdoors; just watch out for predators! Also Russian tortoises are natural diggers, so make sure it's not going to tunnel under a fence and escape.

For food, I'd recommend against feeding it pellets from the store. Russian tortoises are vegetarian, so leafy greens that are high in calcium such as collard greens or kale make ideal meals (this is what we feed her 90% of the time). Dandelion greens are another one of their favorite foods and are fairly nutritious for them, and if you keep your tortoise outdoors you'll probably notice your dandelions disappear fairly quickly :). Tortoises will eat other veggies like lettuce, but since lettuce contains almost no nutritional value you should mostly be feeding it other things. Every so often we'll give our tortoise a diced red pepper or strawberries as a treat too; she loves those.

For maintenance, it's pretty much just a daily feeding, and changing the substrate every 4 weeks or so. Tortoises are pretty hardy creatures and can easily go multiple days without food or water, too, so leaving it at home when you go away for a few days isn't usually a big deal. I'd definitely recommend taking your guy to the vet, too - they can determine if its gender, if it's malnourished, and whether it has any shell-rot or other ailments.

Hope that helps!

Don't forget to paint the shell red.

it says not to paint them but you can mark them with a bit of nail polish or some specific kind of tape. ;)

Here is some animal safe paint, check out the cow down the page.

Russian tortoises are mostly native to Afghanistan, but Muhajedeen doesn't have the same ring to it.

In soviet Russia, Tortoise paints YOU! Da Komrad tortise!

lol. see stuff like that makes me miss being able to rate UP admins.

Deja vu, I remember someone posting that exact sentence before.

You forgot Kaain's quote.

What a **** you have for a neighbour. Gotta be a bit of an **** if you can't look after a tortoise.