Important Things To Consider When Planning A New Tortoise House.

 

Location-

• It needs to be suitable for the tortoise, both size wise and ease of access to the outdoor enclosure, if you have to physically carry them too and from their outdoor pen everyday it will get more difficult as time goes on and they get bigger.

 

• The outside area should have decent grass and not be something that has been used as the dog toilet for years or for

 

• Storing scrap, rubbish and potentially harmful substances.

 

• An area where plants will grow, or seeds if you seed the area.

 

• A level area so it makes it easier to put house and pen fencing up.

 

• Ease for you to get there, its fine in nice dry weather but does the path get muddy in the winter. is it close enough for you to pop out and check on them in your slippers, or do you need to bundle up for an arctic expedition.

 

• Hazards from above- birds in trees pooling down into the pen, large trees that could come down on your tortoise house in a storm. electric or telephone cables overhead, that could come down.

 

• Have you got space for the poo shovel, bins and storing all the other other equipment that you will amass.

 

• Somewhere pleasant for you to sit with them, you don’t want to be stuck next to the smelly compost heap.

 

• Is there water nearby, to hose them down or to fill water bowls, you don’t want to have to keep lugging watering cans around all the time, or spend all of your time coiling up the hose pipe.

 

• You need to decide if you want early morning sun shining on the house to get them up, or do you want evening sun shining on the house to encourage them to follow the heat and head back to bed.

 

• Somewhere without steps in it, or to it, that the tortoise has to negotiate. steps also makes life very difficult for you if you have to move them or equipment in a wheel barrow or on a trolley.

 

• Are the pathways wide enough for the tortoise to get through as it gets older, your little, Aldabra or Sulcata, baby is not going to suddenly turn into Samson overnight, but within 15 years they could be wider than a paving slab, especially if it is a boy.

 

• Is there good access for you to move them out if necessary, either back to your house or the car, if you needed to take them somewhere, like the vets

 

• Is the garden secure, you don’t want you Aldabra in the front garden or where anyone could just reach over the wall and make off with it. or somewhere with open fencing that it can wander off through.

 

• Is the garden secure from neighbours pets and foxes etc. foxes can carry a smaller breed tortoise off in their mouth. in our experience, they don't tend to kill it just drop it in someone else’s garden, giving them a surprise to find in the morning.

 

• Have you checked if the plants already growing in that area are poisonous to tortoises, if so remove them before the tortoise has chance to eat them.

 

• Can you section parts of the pen off so that you can rest areas, or make the tortoise pen smaller if your little guy, or girl, does not need it all at once. You will also be able to cycle the sections around and give the tortoise a change of scenery.

 

• Is there access to get building materials in to build the house and landscape the pen, you don’t want to be struggling to get through with large pieces of timber and stone slabs.

 

• Is there electricity nearby you will need heating and lighting in the house.

 

• Is the location suitable for putting a small solar panel up, we are not suggesting you invest in a full system for you little one but something like a caravan solar system could help with background heating, during the day. you don’t have to do this but it could be something you would consider in the future and then you would think if only I’d built this house five feet to the left it would have worked a lot better!

 

• Cover any ponds to stop the tortoise falling in and drowning, not all species of tortoise can swim or float. You don’t want any accidents.

 

• Shade areas are just as important as sunny areas.

 

• Make sure its not excessively noisy or near equipment like generators.

 

• Make a windbreak area around the doorway so it creates a basking area for them to sit when they get up in a morning.

 

• Is the pen big enough for you to use gardening equipment when it gets to overgrown, like a mower or strimmer to take excessive foliage and grass down.

 

 

Breathe in !

 

Don't forget that the tortoise is going to grow, so, it may have fit through the gap when it arrived, but not so easy to get it back out in the future.

 

In The Pen

• You want to make things interesting and usable for the tortoises but you also have to consider your own health and safety, you are going to be walking around in there too.

 

• Don’t use pebbles or stones that are too small, as they may be ingested with food or the small tortoise could get stuck between them if the stones are too big, use size appropriate for the animal. you can always add a different size later, there is less danger with stones the older the tortoise gets.

 

• Besides hills, have undulating pathways for them to walk. you want them to naturally use their muscles, it makes them healthier than just plodding over boring flat ground.

 

• Maybe have different sections with different environments, more rocks in one more shade in another.

 

• We had some metal shelf panels, we fastened them to the bottom section of the wooden fence, facing the morning sun, in the Sulcata pen. they warm up quickly, so the tortoises love to go and sit beside them, they act like their own radiators. It was repurposing in action, we were not going to use them for anything else but they were too good to throw away and now the animals benefit.

 

• Monitor your animals behaviour and see how they use their home environment, you can always alter it if it not to their liking. It can take them a while to discover new things and begin to use them so don’t be too quick to change things.

 

• Scatter treats around the pen, every so often, to encourage them to forage. use foods of different smells as well as different colours.

 

• Sulcata’s in particular can get board and then they start looking for trouble, like battering gates and fences to get though to something more interesting, which could be your neighbours garden. so make sure there is a secondary fence between the tortoise and your property fence line.

 

• Sulcata are fence line prowlers so any plants you put there could get ploughed down as they march past. put barriers or obstacles jutting out from the fence, into the pen so they have to stop and change direction. It utilises the pen better and they have to stop and think.

 

• Have plenty of corners for the animals to snuggle into, have them facing in different directions so they can choose to get sunshine or shade. We would recommend that you put a paving slab in these corners, as tortoises can wriggle trying to get comfy and this involves digging away at the corner. It does not take long for them to be reaching the bottom of the fencing, so in this case prevention is better than cure. Again, the slabs will hold the heat of sunshine on them, or provide a cooler surface to sit on if in the shade. It also files their nails down too as a bonus.

 

• We would recommend decking outside their house it is a good basking area, easy for you to walk on and you can slide the animals on it, when the door has shut and they have also snuggled up to it because they can't get back inside. (it happens a surprising number of times, especially if you are using something to prop the door open and they dislodge it.)

 

• Create a maze like effect, it dramatically increases the size of their environment and makes it more interesting as they aren’t sure what’s around the next corner. Again, you could fit slide barriers so that you could alter pathways and make them think they had gone somewhere different.

 

• Put low lying obstacles in their way so they have to clamber over them and use different muscles.

 

• Many owners think that the tortoises is not being fed enough and will keep giving them more and more food which can lead to health problems, if they have a pen with weeds and things growing in there then they can help themselves to as much or as little as they require. In the wild there would naturally be times of plenty and times of food shortage. Allow them t o experience this cycle in a small level- we are not suggesting you starve the animal, just because they can survive for several months without feeding does not mean that they should have to.

 

• Keep their diet as broad as possible, its easier to feed a poorly tortoise if is is not a picky poorly tortoise,

 

• Consider having a mud wallow for your Aldabra, it is natural behaviour for the tortoise but it is not for everyone’s garden. don’t think - well maybe I will just have a small one because they will have other ideas. The moment you create mud they will start digging and shaping to the style and size they want it to be. So either commit or don’t but it’s not something you can do half heartily.

 

• Dips as well as hills are important, once below ground level, in a dip, the temperature is very different for the tortoise as it is out of the wind, they like to hunker down. Ground temperature can be up to 10 degrees higher, compared to air temperature.

 

• Get a bowl big enough for them to bathe in, black plastic plasterers trays are good for tortoises of all sizes. they are fairly robust and the colour attracts the heat to warm the water naturally.

 

• Move water bowls around, make them look and search their area for it as a form of enrichment.

 

• Put water bowls closer to the house then they will be heading in the right direction at night, they usually want a drink before they go to bed, especially if it has been a warm day.

 

• Consider fitting autofill horse drinkers, if your animal is a juvenile or above size, that way they always have access to fresh water. We would recommend the green plastic ones as they are easier to keep clean, having the drainage hole in the bottom. Our Aldabras have taken to using them very easily. You have the reassurance that they can get water on the hottest of days when an ordinary drinking bowl will probably have evaporated. If you have yearlings or small tortoises these are no good for you as the animal can’t reach over the rim to get to the water.

 

• Don’t just have flat ground, make it interesting and break up the line of sight, if they cant see another tortoise all of the time they are less likely to want to battle with it as much.

 

• Nettles are good, natural windbreaks and the tortoises will eat them, particularly if you cut them down, they are also good for wildlife.

 

• A mound of bare earth facing the sun is popular as a basking spot. Aldabra is a harsh environment, they are not designed to live with lush green grass all around them.

 

• If you are putting mounds of earth in your Sulcata pen make sure they are in the middle, as it will encourage them to dig. You don’t want them digging down and beneath the pen boundaries and potentially escaping. Even if you don’t put mounds of earth in there it does not mean they wont still dig, it is natural behaviour for them. If you want to try to avoid such behaviour then you need to make sure you offer them enough natural shade. 9 times out of 10 they are just looking for somewhere cooler out of the sun.

 

• Put lots of rocks and slabs in there, it is good for holding heat, rocks are tall enough to break up the sight line and make the tortoise think his territory is bigger than it is, or make them think they are alone in the area. The slabs give rough standing for him to walk over and keep his toe nails more under control, make sure you put them in areas of heavy foot traffic, like near the house door.

 

• Make sure the pens fencing is high enough to keep your other animals out, even the best behaved dog can get over excited around tortoises and you don’t want it getting in there unsupervised and causing issues.

 

• If you are keeping any species of males and females together there is always a chance they could breed and produce eggs (she may still lay an egg if she is alone). Put an area with sand or loose soil available, so that she can dig and lay her eggs if she wants. You don’t have to do anything with the eggs if you don’t want, you can throw them away but it is better for her if she can lay them or she runs the risk of becoming egg bound and that can create serious health issues for her. Although some tortoises will just lay eggs on the ground, the actions of digging the hole help her to pass the egg out.

 

• Make sure there is some shade for you as well, if you are going to spend time sitting in the pen with your hobby.

 

Plants

The important thing to remember when feeding your tortoise, of any species, is that their main diet should be natural weeds and grasses (dried or fresh). Everything else given as a treat should be given in moderation. They can have one or two strawberries or tomatoes- just don't go feeding them a whole box full in one go. 9 times out of ten with food like that if you continually offer it they will eat it, every time.  It is like us, we like a piece of cream cake, which is fine but if we all tucked into a whole cake at every meal we are going to make ourselves ill both in the short term and with longer term complications. The fear of those consiquences does not mean you should not treat yourself every so often, who wants to sit there and chew on a rice cake instead, for the rest of their life,  just don't overdo it, use your common sense -that is why we have it!

 

• Rose bushes are good, they look and smell nice and the tortoise will eat the fallen petals. They are especially good with smaller breeds as they don’t destroy them and they make good shade areas for them.

 

• Poppies- Aldabra love them and they look nice and are good for wildlife, they also grow tall so alter the tortoises available vision of their surroundings.

 

• Hollyhock again look nice and produce plenty of blooms, which all of the tortoises love.

 

• Include evergreen shrubs so that it provides all round shade for them to hide under.

 

• Beware of planting lots of spiky plants as the tortoises go hide under it and you have to get them back out again!

 

• Small trees give more open shade. If they are fruit trees you will need to watch that the tortoise does not eat all of the fallen fruit, as too much s not good for them, maybe you would need to be able to section that area off at certain times of the year. Besides you don’t want an apple falling down on their head- that’s gonna hurt!

 

• Larger trees such as elderflower grow easily and are good for the birds and insects, they produce flowers and look nice , tortoises shouldn’t have the fruit but they can eat the leaves.

 

• Grapes, are easy grow climbing plants and are prolific in the right place. The tortoises should not have the grapes as they can ferment in their gut (who wants a tiddly tortoise!) but they will happily eat the leaves.

 

• Virginia creeper, another quick growing colourful plant that they adore to eat.

 

• Nasturtiums are easy and quick to grown from seeds, and the colour brighten the pen. All tortoises like them. Put things like this and geraniums in raised pots, they break up the sight line and the trailing flowers can be eaten by the tortoises without killing the plant itself, so you have sustained flowering throughout the season.

 

• Set yourself up a little veg area, you can easily grow tomatoes and cucumbers, in grow bags, for treat foods. home grown cucumber are very different to the ones you buy in shops they are much juicier. However, Don’t over feed treats during training, as it can cause malnutrition. An animal stuffed on treats will be missing the nutrients it would get from its normal weed and grass diet.

 

• You can find plenty of lists on the internet of plants tortoises can and cannot eat, if you have green fingers you are well away. If you don’t, maybe get friends and family, who enjoy gardening to grow you some things. They would probably relish having something useful to do with their gardening bounty. Don’t use pesticides and things on the foods the tortoises are going to eat.

 

• Nettles, as we said, make good natural wind barriers, they grow prolifically anyway, where you usually don’t want them, so you might as well try to make use of them.

 

• Order some tortoise seeds off the internet and scatter them in your pen. Plantain is easy to grow from seed and very good for all tortoises.

 

• Next time you take the dog for a walk take a bag with you and go weed picking, however choose a clean supply. Not somewhere that is popular as the local dog toilet or from right beside the road. Make sure you can identify the plants you are looking for, get yourself a book for reference. Natural weeds tend to grow on embankments and roundabouts, places the highways agency has done work and dumped excess soil.

 

• Many weeds prefer to grow in limestone soil so you may need to alter your soil content, in your pen. If you live near a quarry you can get some chunks of limestone and dot them around the pen and they will naturally dissolve into the ground when it rains.

 

• A lot of weeds also like shaded areas, rather than harsh full sun, so this is another reason to put shade into your pens set up.

 

• If you live near the sea you could forage for cuttlefish on the beach, scatter them around the pen and the tortoises can help themselves to this extra calcium. Give them a rinse over in water before you give them to the tortoises. If you live inland you can buy cuttlefish at pet shops and online.

 

•  Have different lengths and types of grass. A good sight break and shade for them as well as different flavours and tastes.

 

• Don’t forget to add supplements, as necessary, to their food.

 

• Lupins - tortoises can love them but they should not be eaten by them.

 

 

House

• Again your housing will depend if it is long term or shorter term occupation, which will probably be mainly influenced by the size of your animal- there is no point in building a massive shed for a daddy yearling but if you have a juvenile then you need to decide is this it and the house will accommodate them for the next 15 or so years, or are you going to upgrade again in the future.

 

• Make sure there is enough space for them to move around and adjust positions and locations in the shed. Tortoises will not always park up neatly, where you want or expect them to be. Sometimes when you go into our Aldabra house and they are all in there, it can look like it is over crowded. At other times with exactly the same animals, huddled together differently, there is enough room to get another ten adults in there too!

 

• Make sure there is space for storing supplementary foods such as hay, depending on the size and number of animals you have, it may work out cheaper to buy a hay bale, rather than just a bag from the pet shop.

 

• Use a metal cabinet / old freezer for storing things like their supplements and Readigrass (a brand of dried cut grass that the Aldabras and Sulcata are fed during winter, you can get this at horse feed supply places). Unfortunately, food stores like this attract rats and mice, who are clever creatures and difficult to get rid of and they can cause a lot of damage and potential disease.

 

• Have double doors on the shed, you can always keep one door closed if you don’t need it but it can make things easier both for the growing tortoises to move around and also to get equipment in and out. Like if you take up the rubber mat flooring or are trying to get a hay bale inside etc.

 

• Give them enough space to get through the door particularly in a morning, they have more often than not been awake for hours and are eager to begin the day. Its safer for them if they don’t have to clamber over their friends in their impatience to leave the building.

 

• Put plastic flaps on the inside of the opening of the outer doors, to retain the heat when the doors are open, (they have them on the chiller sections in some shops) the tortoise can easily walk through them and you can put some hooks up at the sides to hold them out of the way or to let some cool air in if it gets too hot in there.

 

• Very important to insulate the shed well, it can save you a lot of money in the long term.

 

• Put rub strips against the side walls inside, it is easier to replace them than a whole wall, if they cause damage to the shed wall itself.

 

• Slide barriers in front of doors so that you can leave the door open and not have tortoise wandering out or so that you can divide the space it they are not getting on or one of them is not very well and needs peace and it's own space. In our opinion you can never have too many slide barriers, they are much easier to negotiate than keep having to open and close gates. If you do not have other pets to keep out they can also make the area look less intrusive because you can use lower fencing, as you are going to step over it rather than being at gate height so you can open it.

 

• Children’s little Wendy houses are twee and cute but they are terrible to try and insulate. Frankly, if you can build one of these up from scratch, then you have the skills to build a simple square house from scratch yourself, which is much easier to insulate.

 

•  Have a basic first aid kit in there for both you and the animal, with your emergency plan and kit.

 

• Thermostats so you can check how hot it is. A tortoise that is overheating gets very grumpy.

 

 

Put an old quilt along the bottom of the door, during winter, to act as a draught excluder. The door is where you are going to loose most heat.

 

Water

• Think about how you are going to offer them water inside. Over the warmer months, when the tortoise can go outside during the day it is not an issue, as they can drink outdoors. But over winter and prolonged periods of cold weather, when they have to stay indoors you need to give them water indoors. If you have bedding i.e. straw down it can get mixed in with the water or they can just knock the bowl over. The plasterers trays we recommend are good because they don’t tip, the problem with these though is that you carry the tray in and then add the water. However, when they have dirtied the water you then have to struggle to manoeuvre a tray of soiled water out of the shed without tipping it everywhere, including over you. This is another advantage to having double doors, you can try to keep the tray horizontal but you will need help to move it. The alternative is to try and tip it into a more manageable bucket which can be difficult. A better alternative is to provide them with an autofill horse water bowl. They are not huge, so if you need to drain it to clean it out, the amount of water is much more manageable and you can tuck it somewhere safe and they always have water but it is more difficult for it to get filled with detritus and unmentionables.

 

• You could use an old shower tray as a bath for them and sink it into the ground, make sure you dig a soak away hole underneath it , so that you can easily empty the used water out of the plug hole, or you will flood the surrounding area.

 

• If you are going to be tipping trays and bowls of used water out, in the pen. Try to tip it over your plants, you may as well use it to water them and keep them healthy.

 

• You will find that the local wildlife also make good use of these water bowls, which is good for the environment.
• You may also have to consider cost incured of regularly hosing down the inside of the house, particularly if you are on a water meter. Using a bowl and scrubbing brush, instead of a jet washer, is not a pleasant experience. Also, what happens if you live in an area that is affected by a hosepipe ban evey year?. Consider fitting water butts or IBC's to you property to harvest the rain water and you can use it for cleaning the house out.

 

 

 

Roofing

• Think carefully about putting a polycarbonate roof on your shed, instead of a felt one. They  can come in one large piece so you do not have joinings (depending on the size of the shed). However, because of the size they are heavy and cumbersome, so you will need good access and at least one other person to help you move and install it.

 

• They are expensive too but the tortoises appreciate them, they are happy in the light and it keeps the heat in. If you are doing this you need to go for the thickest and don’t cut corners on it,  and go for something cheaper. Either do it or don’t but don’t go with half measures. As I say its expensive but it could save you money long term.

 

• The down side is that the tortoises are awake a lot earlier with the sunlight shinning in, so they can start pushing against the shed door in their impatience to get out, hence the recommendation of a slide barrier in front of it (they don’t realise it is only 5am and you wont be coming to let them out for a few more hours).

 

• One important point is that they filter out the UV  light, so you would still need to put UVB light bulbs up, for the tortoises. They would also need some shelves up in there or something to give them a dark area but those shelves could be your storage area so it would not be an inconvenience for you. You always need somewhere to put stuff, it would also give you a combined greenhouse type area, so you don’t need to make space in your garden for a glass house too.

 

• When you have the lights on in the shed, particularly over winter, the Polycarb roof does shine bright with the reflection of the light, so it might be worth warning your neighbours that you aren't growing marijuana in there, in case you find an unexpected policeman turning up on your doorstep!

 

Flooring

• Think carefully about rubber mats, they are not right for everyone. Something that is robust enough to stop the bigger tortoise damaging it, as they move around, is also very heavy, you are going to need someone to help you drag it outside to deep clean, and even then it can be difficult, they are also very cumbersome to move. If you get anything lighter they are easier to move but also easier to damage, particularly when you have basking lamps shining down on them and drying the rubber out and causing it to split.

 

• Over long term you are better off with concrete floor or slabs over a heat mat. If you have smaller tortoises you could use floor tiles but they are unsuitable for the larger breeds as their weight will break them.

 

• You do need to put some sort of protective flooring down, over a sheds basic floor or else the urine and will cause it to rot quickly.

 

• If you are putting up a new shed put a solid base underneath it, either a concrete pad or breeze blocks or bricks. You want to stop any rodents from digging in from underneath to get somewhere warm . Also, when you have a group of larger tortoises, that is a heavy weight pressing down on the floor and it benefits from reinforcement beneath it. Especially if they all want to go and sit in one corner!

 

 

This photo is when they still had a felt roof on the house, so the light is only coming from the UVB lights. The group shot higher up on the page is when the Polycarbonate roof had been fitted and you can see that the whole room is much lighter and brighter. We find that this means they can waken up earlier, and then when you open the doors they are ready to go out and begin their day. Rather than when the room is darker for longer they come out and sit on the decking for an hour or so whilst they wake up, before going off to explore. It is much more productive for them.

 

Electrics

• UVB light arrays should be put out of your way or you will bang your head as you move around the room. Plan where you are putting your lights, hitting your head on them is no fun and you risk damaging expensive equipment. Combi bulbs are not the most robust and the filament inside is easily damaged, so put them out of your immediate way.

 

• Don’t have lights right inside the doorway, you may think it is a good idea because its a place where the tortoises sit a lot. However, it is not to your advantage because your eyes need time to adjust as you enter the room from outside and by the time that happens you have crashed into it- you never remember that it is there, no matter how many times you go in and out of the room! Also, if you have a group of animals and they congregate at the doorway at night, they are going to stop the other tortoises from getting inside easily. This means the late comers will either wander off to find somewhere else to hole up outside or they will be left waiting by the door and then you have to physically begin shuffling tortoises around to make space for everyone. If you have heaters and lights towards the back of the room it is naturally warmer there away from the draught of the door, thus saving you energy and money but it also encourages all of the animals to get to bed properly.

 

• The lights and heaters are there for the tortoises benefit, so they need to be at an appropriate height and it is a hazard you have to live with. However, you have to be able to safely move around too. You also need a clear pathway near the door in case you have to move an animal in or out, the last thing you want is to get entangled when you are carrying a heavy tortoise.

 

• Have all of your electrical systems that are permanently in use, and need to remain on, on one system and the optional extras on another. That way you can put an overriding off switch on it and just turn the extras on and off from the doorway. You can guarantee that your tortoises will go and sit right where you want to be otherwise, and then you can't reach the switch.

 

• Underfloor heating is good and economical but make sure there is cool space on the floor too. And that applies to both in the light areas, as well as under shelving and shade areas.

 

• Panel heaters are discreet and effective, put them on thermostats for when the back ground heating drops down over night so they can automatically kick in.

 

• Have a Tansun infrared heater for intense heat boost, they are expensive to run but if you have a larger tortoise then the heat needs to be able to penetrate into their core, with these heaters you are warming the tortoise and not the air around the animal, so they are more effective. They are powerful so you must make sure there is nothing near by that could be a fire hazard, especially if you have straw bedding down over winter.

 

• Put your heating on a thermostat so they don’t get too hot indoors and start causing trouble. Tortoises get stroppy and grumpy when they are overly warm. A grumpy Sulcata is going to bash into your legs with their shell and it will hurt as well as start pestering any room mates.

 

• A fly zapper is important, you are likely to attract a lot of flies. It doesn’t have to be electric, you can go old school and have one of the sticky paper ones, or put one of the red lid hanging bag ones up outside in the sunshine, just not too close to the house, as they can smell.

 

• You may need to consider a fan, to cool it down indoors, particularly if you have a polycarb roof. We have one on the Aldabra house roof, and in warmer weather we regularly get to 46 degrees in there and that is with having had absolutely no heating on in their house all day. It is purely down to the sun being able to shine in. Sometimes it remains hot enough in there overnight that the background heating does not need to switch on.

 

 

   If you are going to sit in your chair and doze, watch out that you do not get overturned. The medium sized animals will try to find shade, beneath the seat, and are quite capable of knocking your chair over, sideways, whilst you are asleep. It is quite a rude awakening!

 

Other Pets

• Only you will know the temperament of your other pets, some get on with different animals better than others. some dogs absolutely adore tortoises and become completely fascinated by them. However, even the best behaved dog can get over excited when a tortoise starts to move around, it can trigger their herding instincts. This means that it is never a good idea to leave your other pets alone and unsupervised with your tortoises. Their presence cans stress them or even cause them injury. Therefore you should make sure that your fencing is high enough around the pen that it cannot be jumped by your dog or other animals.