Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I've got a 15lb female leopard and a 5oz baby leopard. I have them in a 11' x 3' "tortoise table" raised 30" off the floor of my basement in Minnesota. The large female is pretty much out grown the enclosure and I need to build a new one. Our local reptile shop Twin Cities Reptile has a 10' x 10' room with a concrete floor for 3 medium size sulcatas. They have hay for substrate. I was thinking that it would be nice to put my new enclosure right on the concrete floor of my basement like the pet store does.

My two concerns are first: temperature - in areas away from heat lamps the floor will always be the temp of the ground below - is that too cold as a baseline temp? Second: there is no place to dig to lay eggs when the female is ready. She has not laid any yet and I have never provided any place for her to dig yet and I am worried that she will be ready soon and I won't know and she will become egg bound. The pet store says that their female just lays the eggs in the hay. Can I count on that? Should I provide an area that is raised that she can climb up and dig down into (I would rather not because it is just more mess to deal with - but I will if that is required to keep her safe).

Thanks for your comments, Ben

Growth over time photo of Hercules

Awesome tortoise, and a great idea for the size comparison!

Thanks. Pretty soon however, she will be bigger than the rock and so my scale figure will be gone! I suppose I will have to set her next to the rock. She has some pyramiding, but not too bad. She has grown like crazy ever since I got her. She has almost doubled in weight every year - At the last photo she is 15 lbs @ 4 1/2 years old! I had another male leopard for several years in the same enclosure that loved eating as well, but he hardly grew at all in 3 years - go figure!

A heat loving tort like a leopard will probably not do well on a basement floor. Also, you can't really count on them to lay eggs without burying them. Most of the time, tortoises aren't picky with where they put their eggs unless they are fertile. However, you don't want to find out the hard way. Plus, leopards tend to benefit from having soil to dig.

I would say your best bet is to build an enclosure and keep it up off the floor. The difficult part is building an enclosure that isn't going to rot, especially if you use dirt substrate. I would personally try to build the enclosure around some sort of large bin/trough, or a few of them set next to each other.

Good luck with your torts.