This guy is right. None of the females for sale these days approach even six inches. Russians aren't a new thing in the trade. They've been THE wild-caught tortoise for over six years now. I got my first one from an overcrowded petstore tank seven years ago. I can only imagine the number of animals that have been sold to be somewhere in the thousands. Even if only one petstore per city sold ten per year, that is still sixty tortoises over six years, and we all know the numbers to be much greater than that (San Antonio, for example, has six petstores that sell Russian tortoises regularly; I see some of them turn over a tank of six to nine every month or so in spring and summer). Even if only five percent of these animals survived with breeders, it would be enough to generate the animals I've seen listed in classifieds.

As for the hatchlings showing up on wholesalers' lists, I don't know any wholesalers, so I couldn't speak intelligently about what they're up to. However, international tortoise farms don't seem too far fetched and are, for me, the next most likely explanation. All I can say is that people have been farming Iguanas in Central America for years now and have made quite a lucrative trade in these animals. Russians are fairly easy to breed. All you need is some nice dry weather with seasonal variation, two or three tortoises of appropriate size, and an incubator. Sure, clutch sizes are small, but I'm sure if you had a few acres and a few dozen tortoises, it could be done. I heard of something like this happening with Hermanns tortoises a year back. Some folks were offering "farm-raised" Hermanns for extremely low prices.

Anyone have any experience with these new youngsters? Anyone have any experience with "farm-raised" animals?

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