Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I had my tortoises out in there own out building that was very well insulated. I heated it with a fan forced floor heater along with the torts heat lights.

Anyways, on Dec. 1st, sometime around 1:00am, there was some sort of power failure in my tortoise house. Whe I woke in the morning at 7:30am and checked on them, I found my 4 adult tortoises frozen. 2 cherryhead redfoots and 2 guyana redfoots.

I did everything I could to revive them, but my efforts were to no avail.

Pebbles, Precious, Pyro and Petals were laid to rest on Dec. 3rd. May They rest in peace!

This is for any of you that have their tortoises in an out building, garage or any other place that needs a heat source to keep warm.

Please take caution and make sure that your equipment is working right. Please make sure you have your wiring connected to a breaker and that you do not over load your outlets. Please make sure your heaters are working properly and are not in need of lubricating or replacing.

Mainly, watch your tortoises carfully and make sure that equipment is working.

Thank you!
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Kelly Wood

1.1 Cherry Head Redfoots
0.1.1 Brazillian Redfoots
1.1 Leopard tortoises
1.3 bloodred Bearded Dragons
0.1 collared lizard
0.3 Dogs
1.3 Parakeets

Sorry for your loss. That HAD to be rough.

I'm so very sorry for you. It's dipping into the low 50's here in California, my Russian is outside in his burrow. Think I should bring him in?

I wonder where kwood23 lives. I live in Phoenix (night time lows in high 30's to low 40s)and my 2 year old aldabra left his heated house during the night and was cold and lifeless for about an hour on Sunday. I took him into my car wchich was heated up and he was fine after awhile.

h

>>I wonder where kwood23 lives."

I live in NW Arkansas. Our hight temps have been in the 40's and our lows in the 20's, but the night this happened, the low was 12 degrees.

It took 6 hours of no heat and my torts were frozen solid. I spent all that day trying to revive them with warm soaks, warms showers, but that did not work.

I cranked up their heat to 90 degrees and put them under their heat lights, but they were already gone.

Thank you all for your support and please be careful.

Kelly Wood

Hi Kelly, that is terrible. I've been worried about that happening to me too as I have an insulated, heated shed with all my tortoises in it for the winter too. Last year, I got a freeze alarm
http://www.homesecuritystore.com/ezStore123/DTProductZoom.asp?productID=1116

This thing is great. You can set it to call up to three phone numbers if the power goes out or if the temperature drops below the point which you set. You can also call into it on any phone, anywhere and it will tell you the temperature at your remote location. It plugs into your regular phone line. It's $195 and worth every cent. I've had a few times that the power has gone out while we were sleeping and would have never known if the shed hadn't called me.

Sorry about your torts.
Troya

Anyone have any picures of winter set ups for their tortoises. I currently keep my two sulcattas in my basement over winter and have done so for the last seven years. They are now getting pretty big and I want to construct something bigger in my garage for next winter. Garage has absolutley no heat. Any pics or suggestions would be appreciated. I live in western michigan along lake michigan

Oh Kelly, so very sorry to hear about the torts. Since both Precious and Pyro were both in my group at one time, I am particularly saddened.

I'll reach out to you. This is a good word of caution though. I had many times considered a separated insulated heated housing for my torts while in Connecticut. Power failure in a cold climate is a risk to be acknowledged.

Take care,

Paul