I am thinking of getting a couple sulcatas and had a few questions. Well first off a sulcata will be my first owned tortoise. I have hd a box turtle about 5 years ago though. Is this a good starter? Also I live in Idaho and it snows here during winter, and do you think it would work if I built an outdoor enclosure that had brick or something around it then it also had a big hiding area that is heated with basking and everything or do you think it will still get too cold? It gets down to the teens and twenties over here for a couple months in winter. Do any of you have any good pics of setups outside?
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Darien Drollinger
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Sulcata???
highendreptiles
Jan 22, 2008 06:45 AM
Replies (1)
dawgcr
Jan 29, 2008 12:48 PM
People have successfully owned/bred Sulcatas all over the world. You really want to try and keep the winter house above 60-65 degrees during the winter. A lot is trial and error at first but you will find something that works best for you. I live in AZ so the coldest nights we get are around 35 degrees and I have a space heater hung inside their tort house which has flaps to keep the draft out. I have a thermometer that I place inside to get a reading 24/7. The space heater also has it's own built in thermostat so it turns off when it reaches 80 degrees during the winter. My Sulcatas will go in/out as they please. I do daily checks on them which include monitoring the heater and making sure everything is safe and working correctly--I also do one nightly check to make sure both torts are inside at night and out of the cold. I have separator built in between so this keeps the bigger gal away from my smaller one.
This is their winter house which has an entrance to the front and back--they are blocked from each other for safety reasons.
I have tried heat lamps but find the space heater to be much more practical and in my opinion a lot safer!! I stayed away from the heating mats only because I was told that when a tort sits on a heating mat for hours and hours it can turn into a nesting site for parasites. But I've also talked to a few people that love the mats, I just found the heater to work ideally for me.
