The Tortoise Table

Hello everyone! My name is Louis I’m 21 years old and I’ve just become a proud owner of a 5 month of Horsfield Tortoise named Donatello.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been doing a lot of research on Tortoises and Horsfield Tortoises as I have never been a Tortoise owner.

As a quick rundown, I bought a Tortoise table from Amazon and have filled it with a coco soil substrate around finger deep as I saw that Horsfields love to burrow and dig to find moisture and to cool down. I have a UVB basking lamp to give light, heat and to help with it’s Vit D metabolism and calcium absorption. The heat below the lamp on shell level has been around 30-32°c and on the cooler side of it’s habitat has been between 22-27°c.

I have a bag of Kale and this calcium powder to start Donatello off with and I’ve read that I need to look for around 1-3g worth of growth a month for a healthy growing tortoise?

Donatello arrived today at around 17:00, he had a wander and a graze around his new habitat for about 10 minutes before burrowing in one of it’s hides where they’ve now gone to sleep. I’ve turned the lamp off and will be watching the temps through the night to make sure it doesn’t get too cold. I’ve seen online to spray the habitat with a bit of water in the morning to act as a mist/increase the humidity and moisture so it doesn’t get too hot all over and keep the soil underneath cool and somewhat damp-ish.

As I said I’m a first time Tortoise and reptile owner so everything is breaking new ground for me, I hope I’m off to a good start and anything that I’ve said so far that I can improve on or change please let me know, and thank you for having me!

Hi Louis, and welcome to The Tortoise Table, and apologies for taking so long to respond to your post!

You've made a lovely table for Donatello (great name by the way), and it's so super that you've been doing your research first (loads of people don't do the research first and then end up with lots of problems). I think your set-up looks good (lots of things to walk over, under and around, which is great for keeping him from getting bored, and you've obviously put a good deal of thought and effort into it, so that's a thumbs up from us!

Regarding the substrate -- coco soil is OK, but it does tend to get a bit fibrous and dusty (although spraying lightly should solve that problem). It's not the natural substrate that they would live on in the wild though, where most of the 'Mediterranean' species (and that includes Horsfields) live on a very sandy soil. So what most of us do is mix together ordinary screened topsoil and children's play sand (bags of which can be bought at garden centres, Homebase, etc. (are you in the UK?). Some people mix it 50/50, but increasingly the preference is for a higher content of topsoil, and I mix mine about 60/40 or 70/30, with the higher percentage being soil. That also gets dusty and needs spraying lightly.

Also one irritating thing is that many tortoises don't drink from their water bowl (I have one that does and one that doesn't), and they can dehydrate quickly indoors under lights, so you should bathe him in warmish water, in a container that he can't see out of, like an old washing up bowl) at least three times a week when he is small. The water should come up to his chin (or where his top shell meets his bottom shell) and he should stay in there for 15 - 20 minutes. The added advantage of this is that they usually wee and poo in the bath so that is less spot cleaning of the table.

And especially for Horsfields, which are a burrowing species, I would make the substrate as deep as possible -- at least 3" or 4" if possible, so that he can completely bury himself (quite alarming when you come downstairs in the morning and can't see him at all and think he has escaped, but in fact he's just happily buried himself!).

Regarding temperature, this is the most important part of husbandry for tortoises, as they are ectothermic (they don't make their own body eat like mammals do). It's great that you have a UVB bulb for heat/light/UVB. Do you have the ability to raise and lower the lamp to increase or decrease the temperature if you need to? I find that when it is warm in the room, I really need to raise the lamp up higher or it is too hot in the table (and the same for colder days when you need to lower the lamp).

Also measuring the temperature. I see that you've got the standard round thermometers mounted on walls of the table. These aren't actually great, because you want to measure the temperature directly under the lamp and at the height of Donatello's shell. I think that if you can take that thermometer off the wall and hold it directly under the lamp at his shell height that it will be quite a few degrees warmer. What you are aiming for is around 30C - 32C directly under the lamp (not much hotter), and around 20C at the cool end and he can move from one end to the other to thermoregulate. Of course with the hot nights we've been having it won't get down to 20C at the cool end, but that is OK as the light isn't on at night.

Many of us use a digital fridge/freezer thermometer with a digital display unit that is outside the table and a probe on the end of a cord that you hang down into the table so that is in the circle of light given off by the lamp. The added advantage of these is that they have a Max/Min feature so you know how hot or how cold it got since you last looked.

Will Donatello have access to an enclosure outdoors on nice days? The UVB from the sun is of a higher quality that what we provide artificially, and they really love it outdoors. If you do build him an outdoor enclosure then keep in mind that Horsfields are demon diggers and climbers.

Kale is OK, and can be useful in winter, but you want to aim for a really wide and varied diet, and weeds and flowers are the way to go. Our website database https://www.thetortoisetable.org.uk/ has over 1000 entries with a traffic light coding system of edibility, and you can use the Traffic Light Filter to produce lists of edible plants for yourself, or just type in the name of any plant to see if it is OK to feed. At the moment you should be able to find lots of dandelions, plantain, sowthistle etc. around, as well as garden plants like campanula, pansies, and more. If a plant isn't on our database, write to us at contact@thetortoisetable and we'll research it for you. If you can't find the instructions on how to use the filter tool (it's in the How to Use the Database section), let us know and we'll talk you through it.

Yes, aiming for an average weight gain of 1g - 3g per month is what to aim for (and Horsfields often need careful monitoring for weight gain, for reasons I could explain.

Re your calcium powder -- can you tell me what brand it is? You should be sprinkling pure calcium powder (limestone flour, calcium carbonate powder) on is food 3 or 4 times a week, and on days when you aren't doing this he should have a calcium and vitamin D3 powder like Nutrobal or RevitaliseD3 (and there are others)

Gosh, sorry this is so long -- I'll end it now, but do feel free to ask any questions you might have. I'll just end by putting in a link to a care sheet for Horsfields, in case you don't already have one: https://www.tortoise-protection-group.o ... 014New.pdf

Cheers,
Nina