Should I Get A Tortoise? 

   

   There are 40-50 different species of tortoises, in the testudinidae family, around the world, and some are much more rare and exotic than others. We only have experience with a fraction of that number. Here, we will be referring to the most popular three traditional ‘garden’ tortoises like Hermans, Spur-thighed, Horsefield. As well as the larger Sulcata and of course the Aldabra.

 

   Tortoises, in general are a popular pet and have been for many years. Particularly with people who are allergic to fur or feathered animals or do not want the hassle of walking a dog. They are much quieter than captive birds and many of the smaller breeds go to sleep for several months of the year, so when they come out of hibernation it is a novelty to have an active pet again.

 

   However, they are not ‘cuddly’ pets like a cat or a dog, they do not like being picked up for long periods, although some animals can be trained to come to you for interaction with a bribe of food. Most tortoises enjoy having the back of their neck scratched and some may even come when you call them, but they can give hours of pleasure from being able to observe them.

 

   Tortoises are a long living animal, even the smaller breeds, so they should not be purchased on impulse. If your child is asking for one then you should consider the possibility that the animal will live as long as they do, maybe even longer. It is a big commitment to be taken on, what are you going to do with the tortoise if the child looses interest in its care, do you want to be responsible for it. Many animals end up in rescue centres through no fault of their own, some times they are unwanted but sometimes they have just outlived their previous owners. If you are serious about taking a tortoise into your life then consider rehoming a tortoise rather than buying a baby animal, there are many out there who deserve a second chance of a happy life. You will also get access to future advice from the rescue centre on how to look after it.

 

   Like dog and cat rehoming centres, you will need to have a home check, or maybe provide photos of your set up, if their COVID precautions are still in place, and you will need to be willing to work with modern husbandry practices. It is no longer suitable to just pop the tortoise in the garden and let it fend for itself. However, if you are serious about this animal then you will have done your research and most people pass with flying colours. These people, are not big scary monsters, they want you to succeed, just as much as you do, and take on an unwanted animal, and give it a happy home, that way it frees up space for them to take in future rescues.

 

    A lot of people remember having tortoises, or friends and relatives who had tortoises, when we were younger. Again they were allowed to roam and hibernate at will and in the following spring they would pop out, from where they had dug down and start all over again. Many garden tortoises are sold as easy care animals ie you pop it in the garden and it feeds itself. That is not the case there is much more involved and much more research on their wants and needs have been done over the years, since they first came to this country.

 

   Yes, having them outside is the best for them, an hour in natural sunlight is worth 8 hours under a heat lamp. However, on bad weather days, particularly in autumn before they head into hibernation they need the regular heat access of being indoors to make sure that they are eating properly and they are in prime condition before going to sleep for several months. Giving them the best of both world gives them optimum care but it does incur expense, which a new owner needs to take into consideration.

 

   It is also important for the owner to try and direct when hibernation will begin. Although the animal will naturally want to settle down at the right time of year, when they weather begins getting cooler. It is important that the tortoise has a bath and a good drink so that it can flush out its system. Ideally it would not have been fed for the previous two weeks, so that all of the food in its system has been passed out. It is not a good idea for a tortoise to go into hibernation on a full stomach, being asleep and inactive for so long, the food inside it begins to rot and this is the cause of many animals demise during hibernation.

 

   Smaller tortoises can be particularly troublesome when they have just come out of hibernation or when they are preparing to go into hibernation. In spring, even though their body is telling them it is time to wake up, often mother nature is not quite ready for them to emerge. The weather could be unsuitable for them to go outside or the food has not begun to grow through yet which means that you have to buy in salads from the shops. This can get expensive. Things like rocket do not keep for long, so you may need more than one shop a week to keep them supplied. With the poor weather that we have had this year vegetables and things have been in short supply, which would also create difficulties.

 

   An animal that has recently emerged from hibernation will have used most of its fat reserves during its winter sleep, which means you need to get their body fired up as soon as you can, the longer they don’t eat when they are awake, the greater the potential problems can become.

 

   In the past people did not know enough about how to keep these unusual animals and despite being full of good intentions, many times the wrong thing was given, for example: they should not eat dog or cat food. They should not live on lettuce and tomatoes and fruits. It is like us living on packets of crisps, pizza and chocolate biscuits. They taste good, so of course you would be eager to eat them but long term, as a regular sole diet, they would give you health issues.

 

   Ideally tortoises want a natural weed diet, you can get packets of seeds on the internet and scatter them around their pen area and leave them to grow. Plantain is very easy and popular with the animals. Not only does it give them a balanced diet throughout the summer but it also gives them something to do, to forage for their food naturally. You can still give them treats- like tomatoes, or cucumbers, in small moderation. In fact things like that are ideal to put calcium powder on, for any tortoise species. It is a good way of being able to monitor each animals vital calcium intake, so that you know they are all having some. Instead of scattering it on a pile of food and the wind blowing it away or one animal just manages to eat the bits that did not have any on it.

 

   Ordinary garden tortoises are incredible diggers and some are good climbers, too, including up chicken wire and bushes. This is partly down to a good sense of balance which improves with age. Horsefield tortoises are notorious for escaping so you need to put plenty of thought into a tortoise’s pen design and make sure it has a mesh lid on it. and mesh down below ground to stop them from digging out too, or you will spend hours looking for your little tortoise and their camouflage works surprisingly well.

 

   Deep digging are especially prevalent actions, during autumn and they are thinking about hibernating. They will also dig down into the soil and they can go much deeper than you expect, on one occasion ours dug to the depth of my fingertip to elbow and he is only a 10cm tortoise! One year he kept doing it and we got so desperate that we stuck a metal washer on his back and we could use a metal detector to find him easier ( the washer was removed before he went into hibernation). The other alternative it to train your dog to locate them, under supervision, the retrievers are particularly adept at this and it can save you hours and hours of frustrating searching and digging their pen up.

 

   An advantage to keeping a smaller tortoise breed it that most vet practices have had some exposure to treating them, although, it is still best to take them to an exotic specialist whenever possible.

 

 

 

Have I Got The Space For One?

   The amount of space that they require does depend on the size of the animal, of course. However, their territory does need to be substantial and realistically several acres for the larger ones. Also, they are a herd animal and do enjoy being kept with at least one friend. You need space for them to roam and explore, plus land to cycle grazing, to sustain them throughout the year. And then room for their housing and ideally a glass house for cooler days. This means they are not the sort of animal you could keep in a traditional semi detached house, once they begin to mature.

 

   In our experience, unlike some other species of large tortoise, such as Sulcata, Aldabra's do not prowl the boundary lines; most of them are content to stay closer to home, most of the time. However they do need a lot of food, if you don't have the grazing for them, then you will need to go foraging to get bags and bags of weeds for them to eat! sometimes more than once a day, if they are feeling hungry.

 

   A bag of mixed salad and rocket leaves does not go very far, and bulk buying from the supermarket can prove very expensive, when natural weeds are in short supply. All tortoises should be fed on natural graze as much as possible – eating salad & fruit isn't good for them nutritionally and is the equivalent of humans living on 'junk food' – once in a while makes a nice change, as a treat, and everyone likes it - but it doesn't do you any good to be your main diet!!

 

   If you do not have space to grow food for them over winter then you will need to buy in bales of hay and sacks of Readigrass or the like, so you will also need somewhere vermin proof to store that too.

 

   Aldabras do produce a lot of poo and urine, so you will need to wash their house out regularly to avoid it smelling like the elephant house at the zoo, particularly in warm weather. Considerations like what do you do with all of the poo are a factor, it is good for the garden but do you have space to compost it. It will also attract a lot of flies, - good for the local bird life but not so good for friendly neighbour relations.

 

   If you have a north facing garden then it will be cooler and you may find them more reluctant to come out of the house so make sure that you put thought and planning into where you want things like housing to be located rather than just throwing something up where it is most convenient.

 

   Incorporate things like rocks, walls, trees, bushes etc. to break up their sight line. If they cant see each other all of the time, in the pen, they think they have a lot more space, even if there is only the width of a brick actually separating them.

 

   They do get very big and they are not respectful of your flowers and garden! They will either plough right over them or eat them. They wont limit themselves to just the things you want them to eat either. If you want a nice garden buy a pot tortoise!

 

 

 

Small one at the front is about 2 years old, left front is 10-15 years old. The front right is a feamle in her 30's. The back right is a male of the same age.

Have I Got Time For One?

   You buy this small tortoise and come bed time you can pick it up and put it inside to keep it safe. However, in ten years time this tortoise is now too large for the average person to pick up, on their own, so you are going to need to spend time training it to know where its house is. Have you got and hour or two to wait, every night, whilst it finally puts itself to bed. One a nice sunny evening they will happily chill until 7 or 8 o’clock at night. This is an issue that may only get worse, the big guys (in the picture above) need a minimum of three people to lift them or the use of a hoist or a tractor. Full grown adults will be even harder to move. When Charles Darwin first saw them on Aldabra- he said it took 8 men to move one!- and those sailors would have been fit too, used to hauling rigging, and such, several times a day.

 

   They do become an integral part of your life, you need to plan your day around them because you can guarantee that when you are short on time, they will be at their most uncooperative. ''My tortoise would not go to bed," is not usually considered a valid excuse for being late for work by your boss! A lot of patience is definitely required because they can be very stubborn at times. They have their house on their back so why do they need to move, just because you say so? is their thought. They have not heard the weather forecast that it is about to snow!

 

 

Have I Got Enough Money To Look After It Properly?

   The reality is that money is a very big factor in keeping the big guys. During summer you usually get free sunshine and grass to feed them but over winter they are a lot more expensive to keep. At some points over last winter it was costing us nearly £1000 a month just to keep the tortoises warm, and run their UVB lighting arrays, and that is in housing that is well insulated. Meanwhile we got to snuggle down in three jumpers under a quilt!

 

   Granted, we have a lot more animals than the average person but it still costs the same to run a kilowatt heater, per hour, if there is one animal sat beneath it or if there are five. We have solar panels fitted but even so they work best in summer and that is not when you need the free energy, and, come winter it is a lot more cloudy and so they produce far less.

 

   With a smaller breed of tortoise, their habitat will basically remain the same size throughout its life. However, with the larger breeds as the tortoise grows it will outgrow its environment, you will need to upgrade housing and fencing regularly in the future. Simple things like our big males wont fit through a, ordinary sized, shed door any more, would mean you would have to get a double width shed in the future. You aren’t going to need that when it is a young animal but it is something you are going to need to factor in for the future, they are not cheap to buy. Also, what do you do with the animals whilst you take down the original shed and replace it. You may love them but you don’t want to keep it in your house, even as a temporary measure- they eat a lot but a lot comes out the other end too and you don’t want it staining your living room carpet!

 

   Over winter they wont go outside to graze as often, so you have to take the food to them, which means buying in bales of hay and large sacks of dried Readigrass, similar to what you would for a horse, which can get expensive, not to mention having to have somewhere to store it all. Another consideration is have you got somewhere nearby that sells that sort of thing, you would be looking for a animal supplies shop like Mole Country Stores or other independents outlets. If not then you are going to have to travel to get there which means you will probably have to bulk buy in order to make it financially more viable and then you have to find extra storage for it all. You can of course get Readigrass online, like most things theses days, but it will cost you more to have it delivered.

 

   These animals need extra heating all the time - think having the central heating on all year round, as well as special UVB lighting. They are cold blooded animals and need to warm up first thing in a morning before going out to feed, if they don't get warm enough they wont eat. They also need a robust, large, indoor enclosure for when they cannot go outside to graze because it is too cold or wet, and in England that's quite often! If they can't get to the food themselves you have to provide it for them- cut the grass, go out picking weeds, etc., which is time consuming.

 

   Whilst the Aldabras are not stupid, and over winter are more content to stay indoors under the heaters, they always have access to their outside pen if they want to stretch their legs. You do need to make sure they do not stay out too long as they will chill down quickly and make it harder to get them back to bed.

 

 

You can see from the darker green patch, behind her, where she has been sat before and the heat of her body has melted the ice on the grass. A great way for her to cool her temperature.

   

   As well as feeding, heating and housing the animal you need to take into account what happens if the animal is ill and needs to see a vet. Fortunately it is not a common occurrence, however, vet bills for these animals easily run into the high hundreds if not thousands of pounds. Would your children understand that the money you have been saving to take them to Disneyland has been spent on the tortoises' vet bill?

 

   Paignton Zoos Aldabras were featured in a newspaper article, a few years ago. One of their females needed an x-ray, however, her weight pressing down on the x-ray plates kept breaking them, and they cost £900 each! This was a female weighing 89kg (14st). The males get to 250kg, there is no way they could use an x-ray, so you only option would be an MRI Scan and those are VERY expensive.

 

   They are also an exotic animal and not all vets have the ability, experience or facilities to treat them. This means that you need a specialist and whilst there are a few of them around they are still widely spaced across the country. Are you prepared to travel to take the animal to an exotics vet? or spend thousands of pounds on an MRI scan at a University vets, and still have the very real risk that the animal will not recover. Tortoise treatment can be a slow, long, drawn out, process which requires a number of vet visits. Do you have the facilities to get it there, both transport and man power? If the tortoise is ill it wont want to move so you are going to have to lift it, have you got several strong friends who would be willing to come and help. Does the vet even have room for it in their practice?! A lot of vets are just set up for dog, cat and furies sized cages.

 

 

Are They Valuable?

   Aldabras are one of the more high-priced tortoises to buy because they are rare. If they do come up for sale, expect to pay thousands rather than hundreds of pounds! However, it is the up keep of them, which is expensive and not just the initial purchase.

 

   You also need to do you utmost to ensure that your animals cannot wander off- with or without ‘assistance’. With security in mind all of our animals are micro chipped. They are monitored at home by 24hr CCTV and have high security fencing around their enclosures and their best friend is a dog who is very protective of them. The number of Aldabra keepers worldwide is a surprisingly small community, we believe that there is probably between 170-200 Aldabras in this country. If animals were stolen and offered for resale people would hear about it, there is a limited market for people who have the space, money, desire and ability to care for the larger animals. Some of our animals are even well known in the USA.

 

 

 

Do I Have Enough Support To Look After One?

   It maybe you that is passionate about getting an Aldabra but you really need to make it a family decision, it is going to affect them too, even if they don’t look after it daily. You need to think about the uncomfortable fact that as the animal is getting older, so are you. You buy this small yearling tortoise which is easy to move but they are going to get bigger and heavier too! By about 10-15 years old, they are getting too heavy for an average person to pick up alone. Practical things, like at that age they begin becoming too big to fit into a wheelbarrow safely, so you will need someone to help you manually lift it.

 

   A simple mistake that people make is to think that a Sulcata tortoise of the same size, is the same weight as an Aldabra. This is not the case, Aldabra tortoises are much more domed than a Sulcata, which makes them about a third heavier. Truthfully that extra weight makes a very big difference, they are very solid animals. It can be like trying to move a boulder with legs and in some cases it is just as difficult to get a safe grip  on them both to do so.

 

   Are you fit enough to take care of it? What happens if you are taken ill, or have to work late, could your partner or children cope or do you have friends you could call on? What happens if you want to go on holiday, you can't take it with you, or put it in kennels, like a dog. Does your friend or family member have the ability to look after your 30 or 40st tortoise? Do they want that level of responsibility?

 

   Will it fit in with the rest of you pets? Generally Aldabras are not bothered by other animals, such as dogs but it does depend greatly on your tortoises’ temperament as well the animals going in with them. It can take a while for the tortoise to show signs of stress, which would be going off their food and signs of runny noses.

 

   Obviously it is not advisable to mix animals unsupervised and the chief concerns should be chance of transferring illnesses or accidental injuries to both parties. Your tortoise should always have its own space, away from others.

 

   Many people want to buy one for their children, who are very ‘into’ tortoises. A tortoise, giant or small, should not be an impulse buy. Your children’s attitudes and interests are going to change as they get older, what about when they go off to university? Halls of residence wont allow pets, so the tortoise has to stay with mum and dad, and the kids leave with the promise to return every weekend to help look after the animal. However, university life takes over and visits become less frequent, for whatever reason and parents are left looking after the tortoise. The giants don’t hibernate, so they are with you all year round, which could interfere with plans that you always wanted to do yourself, when the kids left home- like that round the world cruise.

 

'THE REAL QUESTION SHOULD BE DO YOU WANT A TORTOISE TO LOOK AFTER?'

 

   If your child wants an Aldabra when they are older, then they can get one. When they have the right set up and conditions in their life, don’t feel pressured into taking on something you are not ready for. Also don’t fall into the trap of getting a smaller breed as a compromise. If a smaller breed is not what the child really wants then it will quickly loose interest. That small breed tortoise has done nothing wrong in life, it deserves a loving home, and if you cant give it that then don’t take it on in the first place.

 

   The other important question is what happens to the animal if you died or became incapable. Zoos are often very reluctant to take on extra animals, they have enough of their own to look after. These animals can easily live over 150 years, the hard truth is that they are certainly going to outlive you, your kids and probably your grandchildren, maybe even your great grandchildren!!

 

    It does make a unique family heirloom though, it beats a brass candlestick! and your tortoise can provide you with hours of enjoyment.

 

 

 

 

I Am Not Sure I Can Look After An Aldabra But Would Still Like A Big Tortoise, Are There Any Alternatives.

Our Big Male Aldabra, Samson, is in his 30's and a male Sulcata about 15 years old. This sort of size is typical for when Sulcata need rehoming because people are no longer able to cope with moving them.

 

    A smaller tortoise, that still grows to be a much larger than average tortoise is the Sulcata species, also known as African Spurred Tortoise because of the robust scales and spurs covering its head and limbs. These sandy coloured reptiles are a very popular tortoise with someone hoping to be able to keep a giant. With their prehistoric look, they make you think of a modern day dinosaur walking across your lawn and in their own way can be more impressive than the larger animals.

 

   The plus points to this species, is that there are many more of them available in this country. They are successfully bred by breeders in the UK, so you can buy a baby animal from either a pet shop or online selling forum or site. They are also a much more affordable price than an Aldabra.

 

   Unhappily, due to their large size and weight, many people find that they have overestimated their capabilities to look after them or have not done enough research about how they can alter personality when they reach the age of sexual maturity. Unfortunately this means that there are a growing number of these animals being handed into rescue centres, just when they are starting to get big.

 

   However, for anyone who has put proper thought into taking on one of these animals this gives you the ideal chance to bypass their early years and get a larger tortoise quicker. Realistically you have to decide if you want the cute baby stage and have to wait for it to get bigger, which could take 15-20 years plus or if you want to rehome a larger tortoise, and immediately, or maybe in just a few years you will have achieved your dream to have an actual giant tortoise!!

 

   There are plus and minus sides to both ideas- with a baby, your care and management can ensue that it grown well but you only get the big guy when you are older and may find it more difficult to look after it. However, starting with a baby can be frustrating, these animals, just like your children, do not all grow at the same rate. And in fifteen years you may still have an animal that is only the size of an adult hermans tortoise. One thing you should not do is overfeed them or feed them too much protein, like pellet foods, to boost them up, it will cause the animal health issues in the future, which is not fair on it, or your wallet. They need a natural diet, so lots of grass with calcium supplements and if you bide your time the animal, just like a child, will eventually get its growth spurt and be much healthier as a result.

 

    If you opt for the rehoming a bigger animal, you have skipped its formative years, which means that although you are doing a good thing by giving this animal a second chance home it does mean that you are working with someone else’s possible husbandry mistakes and often these animals can have health issues such as pyramid shells. They are designed to be grazing animals and need a high fibre and low protein diet, so that is lots of grass and hay and not vegetables and fruits, which can upset their gut bacteria because it is far to rich for their bodies evolutionary design.

 

   The pyramiding can be partially corrected, over future years, with the right diet but it will never be eradicated, it will just be a case that as the shell gets bigger, as the animal grows, the pyramiding will become less noticeable. It does give the animal individual personality though.

 

   All this may sound a little bit like they are an Aldabras poor relation, the consolation prize so to speak. That is not the impression we are trying to give, Sulcata’s are a great animal in their own right and the species has many ardent fans but you need to be aware that they are very different from both Aldabras and their smaller distant cousin species like Herman’s tortoises etc. With an average life span of over 70 years there is the very real possibility that they could be with you for your life.

 

   Again, it is a tortoise that needs heat, so energy bills will be high, the UVB lighting is also very important, to convert the calcium supplements to a strong skeletal infrastructure and shell, you don’t want a large, rambunctious, tortoise with weak bones or it can cause itself damages like broken limbs, which take a long time to heal. Realistically the price of electricity is still going to be a lot less than what you would be paying if you had to take the animal to the vets for serious or long term treatment. In the long run scrimping on the basic essentials is bad money management.

 

   If you go with the notion of getting a larger animal then you can have the one outlay for its accommodation rather than having to upgrade it several times as the animal outgrows its habitat or else you end up heating a large shed with just a small tortoise in it for many years.

 

   Sulcata are an interactive animal in their own way, they can be trained to follow you around the garden and be hand fed. They are a much more active species than the Aldabra who are more concerned with eating than exploring. Unfortunately Sulcata are fence prowlers so they will be trampling over your borders if they have free run of the garden and watch out for your garden ornaments being knocked over. We would definitely recommend that you put extra boards along your fence panels to protect them. Being so well armoured Sulcata can easily break things, even when they are not intending to, so if they routinely catch fence boards as they walk past or when they settle down for the night, snuggled up to it, then it wont be long before they break it and are through it, so the question will be does your neighbour want a giant tortoise!!

 

   Sexual maturity in Sulcata’s is when they reach about 15 inches/ 38 cm, and by then you should deffinitivly be able to tell the sexes of them. Under this size you can keep them as a group with no major issues. Once they hit maturity you would have to separate two males, when they cant be closely supervised, or they would regularly fight and try to kill or disembowel each other. This means you would have added expense and issues of running two sets of everything.

 

   We can almost hear a number of you crying out in disagreement, “our Tommy and Timmy get on very well together!” Then you should consider yourself extremely lucky, Tommy and Timmy would be the exception to the rule. 9 times out of 10 there would be battles causing blood and injuries.

 

    If you had two females they would be more tolerant of each other and if you had a pair, then the future could be spent listening to a lot of monotonous, mating activity. And they are quite noisy about it, so if you have neighbours, think if they will be happy to be listening to you tortoises rutting, for hours, whilst they are trying to enjoy their garden in the sunshine.

 

   These animals do not need a friend, they are happy on their own, and are naturally solitary animals. So if you are getting youngsters, we would advise from experience, just to get the one. It will make your future life so much easier and less stressful, for both you and your tortoise.

 

   Just one more thought on this- if you get one and then decide that you want to get another one when the original one is older, the first one is very unlikely to accept the new ones presence, with ease,  it will still think it is a rival. The Gulars (forks beneath the chin of the animal) are perfectly placed to cause maximum damage. The first one would pin the second into a corner and then rear back and repeatedly slam these Gulars into the side of its smaller victim, with the intention of piercing the side of its shell or anywhere else it could damage it. They can be ruthless, you would need to monitor them closely, much easier for them to be to be an only ‘shell baby.’

 

   Everyone thinks how delightful it would be to have a giant tortoise roaming around their garden, images of country estates with immaculate flat grounds come to mind, where everything is idyllic. Unfortunately, the one big downside to Sulcata is that they like to dig, and boy can they dig. It applies to both males and females and is a natural way they have developed so that they can get out of the scorching Saharan sun and they are quite happy to do it in the English countryside, (and any other parts of the UK too!) it is not a shallow scrape that they eak out. We are talking extreme rabbit burrows, that an animal over half a metre wide can get down and turn around in. They have powerful forearms, and for their size shift earth faster than a backhoe. Flinging it behind them across your pristine lawn with every swipe of their limb. It takes the remarkably little time it dig it deep enough to get their body in, out of the sun, and then over subsequent days they will excavate it further. They can get up to 10 feet deep.

 

   We know from experience just how big these chambers can be, one of our animals dug one out and my mum was able to crawl down it, into the chamber and turn around, whilst the animal was also down there, needless to say we had to collapse it and ruin all of his hard work. (We did let her and the tortoise out first though!)

 

   Again, it is something that they like to do on the fence line, so they risk going under your neighbours garden or under the road or something. If you are out at work all day, you may not immediately notice it, if the animal puts itself back to bed before you get home and then you could come home one day and find it has escaped.

 

   During spring when the new grass is coming through they are particularly voracious eaters and can eat and drink like gluttons, putting on as much as 15% of their body weight in one sitting. This has the knock on effect that there is a lot comes out of the back end too. Sulcata originate from sub Saharan Africa and water is scarce there so they have developed the ability to internally recycle their waste water until there is very little to expel, instead they produce a white substance known as Uric Acid, which is much easier to clean up. In comparison Aldabras produce a lot of urine and can make their housing shed soggy and unpleasant. As Sulcata can eat so much at this time of year they also produce a lot of poo and because it is very rich grass it can be rather loose. If you have more than one animal they manage to smear it everywhere, as they clamber about (no matter how regularly you clean up after them, there will always be bits that you have missed). As a result they can look rather unkempt in Spring and need a regular scrub downs with warm water, to stop the risk of them getting fly strike.

 

   Realistically, you need to plan what you are going to do with all of this excess poo, it can be used on the garden for fertiliser but it does attract flies, which in itself is good for the bird and wildlife species around you but it many not make you popular if you have neighbours who like to have outside barbecues. You will often find that your dog is happy to help you clean up and will go around eating it- it wont do them any real harm but it is a bit of disgusting habit!

 

   When fully grown these males will still be bigger than an average person can pick up by themselves and they are a bit too big to fit in the wheelbarrow, which makes transport difficult, there is always a leg or two hanging over the side, which can be a bit perilous, especially if they don’t want to got to bed and you need to go retrieve it from the bottom of your garden.

 

   The longest Sulcata recorded was 82cm/ 2.7 feet and the heaviest 105kg but we don’t believe they were the same animal. Typically they would be up to 76cm and weigh between 36-91 kg depending on sex.

 

   In conclusion, if you put proper thought and precautions into your set up, before you begin, Sulcata make great long term pets, they are interesting and unique characters. We would heartily encourage you to ‘go for it’. A fascinating, and potentially more manageable, alternative to the true giant species but they can be quite challenging too.

 

 

    The above highlights some of the negative aspects of keeping an Aldabra and Sulcata tortoise, none of them are insurmountable if a giant tortoise is what you trully want in your life but they are the things you really need to consider. Every one thinks about the good things about getting one, but it is the bad ones that will make or break you. The best piece of advice when contemplating getting a giant tortoise is to make a list of the downsides of having an animal this size, for you, both now and in the future. If you can go through that list, with confidence that you can cope, adapt your lifestyle and are willing to make the necessary sacrifices, (and there will be sacrifices) to combat and overcome these potential problems then you are in a good position to make a success of your venture. You need to be going into it with your eyes wide open and not on impulse or both you and the animal will regret it.

 

   If you cannot answer positively to the above considerations, maybe you would be better saving your money and putting it towards a tortoise experience day, - you can have all of the enjoyment of getting up close with these majestic creatures without any of the hassle of keeping them yourself!

 

   Or come and see Samson and the gang at one of the educational displays they sometimes appear at, during the summer months. Have a chat with Adrian about tortoises- he doesnt bite- well, not on a good day!