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Could you give me some tips on owning a sulcata? from your expirience. i just got a baby sulcata 8 weeks. everytime i ask sombody about them they just give me a link, but i want to know things from peoples expirence with sulcatas. i thought i'd ask you becuase i seen pics of your teddy and he looks healthy, and happy.

forgot to add a pic

Best thing I can tell you is "save money"! I'm not kidding, these
beasts need to have changes made to their accomodations and
accessories as they get bigger. It's not like having one tortoise,
it's like having a different one every year. There are a lot
of folks on this forum that have small sulcatas and from what
I see a new batch of people with hatchlings. Small sulcatas are
easy enough to care for, and the info on proper diets and
heating/lighting all that is out there and relatively straight
forward. You've got plenty of time to look at all those links
and see what you can learn. My advice for hatchlings is make
sure they don't get a chill or cold. I never let Teddy sleep
below 78 degrees until he was over a year old. Not until he
was over 10 pounds did he sleep at room temperature at night.
Make sure your basking temperature is in the 90's right now,
Teddy basked at 105 as a baby but his enclosure was 8 ft. long
300 gallon cage so he had 70 degrees areas also if he wanted
to. Mostly he basked and lollied about and ate, didn't sleep
most of the day at all, maybe 2 naps. Currently as a bigger
guy, his basking temp indoors was 125 F and he basked a lot
there also. Again, the cage was large enough to take a break
from the basking. Now he's outside 24/7 (I didn't let him sleep
outside until just recently, he always came indoors at night
until he was over 45 pounds, but I'm kinda protective) and has
his own cottage (if you haven't seen it, it's not too long ago
I posted pics of his cottage on the new forum).
So we've gone through two indoor cages 300 gallon and a 1000 gallon
and now he's gone through two outdoor houses we built and he
outgrew until this cottage was completed.

Give your baby a variety of food, as much grass opportunity as
he can get (grazing is good for the beak) and give him some
endive & escarole lettuces, collards, mustard greens, turnip
greens, green peppers, yellow squash, zuchinni squash and
access to fresh water all the time. I kept water in his indoor
cage when he was in the house all the time, but outside I give
him water in the morning and do not leave standing water around
(mosquitos). He gets hosed off and plays in the mud quite a bit.
He knows where to go if he wants water, he starts banging around
underneath the hose area to remind me.

When you soak your baby, make sure he is dry right after that
and warm, do not let him in a draft, keep him off the floor
of the house if you suspect cold drafts. Watch him outside,
be careful of large birds, dogs, cats, racoons etc... and build
a safe enclosure with top for him outside. Maybe 4 X 4 right now
with a chicken wire top and lots of shade.

Don't plan to keep your sulcata indoors forever, they are very
stinky and destructive - he's flipped over bar chairs and a piano
bench, scratched the phoo out of the sheetrock walls just walking
by (big arms!). We've repainted several times the area below
1 ft. height in some places! When I say stinky, I mean, poop
bigger than any dog could put out, and that baking under 125 degrees
will have you running to build an outdoor house no matter what
the cost! lol!!!!

thank you for all your advice, i don't really know that much about sulcatas i'm only a kid, and i don't have much money to buy him anything to fancy

How old are you? My 11 year old son can not even lift my sulcata
and my sulcata is only 4 years old. This isn't a cheap animal
to keep and in no way can you keep it in a glass tank for long.
Kind of like keeping a small pony in a while but worse.
Have you seen what a sulcata looks like when it's bigger?

here's a youngster on a bigger one

not a pet for a child, there's no way they can take care of it

This is an old pic of Teddy and Thomas

i just turned 13. i know how hard it is to keep a sulcata and how big they get, i was willing to take on the responsibility. my mom said she is gonna have somthing built outside for it and the other tortoise.

Why did you pick a sulcata? Was it the price or had you been given advice from someone else to get one?

I don't own sulcata, but I adopt them out and borrow one for educational displays. "Bertha" is about 35 pounds now, and let me tell you what I have to go through just to borrow her.

I have to have a 50 gallon rubbermaid to transport her. I don't know what we'll do in a couple of years, because she's almost too big for it now. How will she get to a vet in a few years, when she won't even fit in the back seat of a car? It's getting hard to carry her, too, since that's 35 pounds in a rather small space.

I have to wash her off for TV and radio interviews, because in the summers she lives outside in a wire-enclosed pen, and when she deficates, the feces and straw stick to the plastron a bit, and you don't want that smell in an enclosed room like a radio studio. Even when she's hosed off and scrubbed, the room smells like a barnyard.

Another 30lb adoptee lives on 2 acres of fenced land in the summer. He's already dug one hole in the side of a hill, and it's so far back the owner can't reach him to pull him out. It's also a foot and a half wide! He's not even half grown now, imagine what he could do to a yard ten years from now.

Lastly, Bertha and her sister live in a basement enclosure in the winter. They make so much dust that the owner installed what amounts to a sneeze guard to keep out some of the dust. During feeding time they grunt and run and ram into each other, just to see what the other is eating. You can hear them throughout the whole house, and if you're in the kitchen right over the basement, you think World War III has started and the house is under attack! Even if there was only one, you'd still know it was diner time by the shaking of the walls when she runs to her food.

Still, they are very personable, and run to greet you when they see you. But, so does my dog, and he's a lot easier to care for.

Katrina

they're wonderful animals, just difficult to manage
I agree - totally different than dogs, kids can take
care of dogs easily enough but a dog you can put a leash
on and control, what does a giant tortoise do - what he wants to!

I have a large black feeding tub that I put Teddy in, which
then sits in the back of the van - I know that ain't gonna work
even much longer either. I swear I'll have to get a pony trailer
but I think it might bounce too much since it'd be relatively
light. I can still manage to carry him safely, but he's getting
there all right.

i know how hard it is to keep a sulcata and how big they get, i was willing to take on the responsibility. my mom said she is gonna have somthing built outside for it and the other tort.

do you think it is a good idea to build a green house?

What kind is the other tortoise? I've heard that Sulcatas should not be kept on the same land with other species of tort. One account spoke about how one of the larger species of tortoises was rammed, intimidated and killed by a Sulcata half its size. You may want to keep them in seperate areas once your Sulcata gets some size on it.

I know its hard to take all of these warnings to heart when you are young and REALLY REALLY want a new pet. I just did the same thing you did. I bought a Sulcata hatchling on a whim. Most people don't have the experience that I do with animals. I've never had a tortoise but I've owned nearly every species of domestic basking turtles over the last 22 years. None of them comes close to the needs and effort described in this forum for the ownership of Sulcatas. But on the other hand I've owned a 65 lb. alligator snapper (not a common snapper) for nearly a year and I'm capable of physically handling a large animal. Even so I think I'm for an interesting and rewarding challenge with this tortoise. Good luck with yours.

Kevin