Posted by: gothlic768 at Sat Jan 28 16:06:01 2006

I got a Russian Tortoise about 2 months ago and in the spring I want to build an outdoor enclosure for him (I plan on getting a female soon aswell) Do you have any ideas for building it....size.... plants....how deep into the ground should the walls go?? any information would help greatly!!! Also, since i live in CT wut time of the year (what temperture) should I bring him back in??

Good sources of info for russian tortoises (aside from all us geniuses on kingsnake :-> ) would be www.russiantortoise.net, www.tortoisetrust.org and Ed Pirog's new book on Russian Tortoises, which might be available on Amazon.

I built my russian tortoise pen out of 1"x8" pine boards that I treated with Thompsons water proofing stuff. The boards lasted about 4 years before rotting. Now I'm going to replace them with some sort of plastic lumber. My local botanical garden is selling lumber made out of recycled plastic flower pots. Consult with someone who actually knows how to build things out of wood. My carpentry skills make Homer Simpson look good.

The soil in my backyard has a very high clay content. The tortoises can barely dig through it. So I only put the boards down 6" into the soil They've never even tried to dig out. They might tunnel under a clump of grass, but they don't go for the walls. If your soil is looser, you may have to go down 12" and maybe put down some rocks or wire to discourage digging.

I also put a cover over the pen to keep out animals and strangers. It consists of hardware cloth (looks like screening) on a frame of 2x2s. Some people use PVC pipe for the frame. Mine is hinged so I can swing it out of the way and do pen maintenance. I also put a lock in it, but have failed to use it most of the time.

My pen is 8'x8' for one male and two females. When I started to get hatchlings I put a side pen of 3'x6' on it to house them. When one of the hatchlings turned out male, and his father decided to fight with him, I used the side pen to alternately house the males.

My pen is mainly full of yard grass, some of it in tall clumps which the females like to use as an egg laying site. I've tried planting clover in there but it has little success. The torts probably eat it as it is sprouting. I have spread bone meal in the pen to increase the calcium content of the soil. The torts do eat a lot of the grass. I pull weeds and clover from the yard outside the pen. It seems important to keep the grass inside the pen trimmed down. The torts don't use heavily overgrown areas as much, aside from tall grass clumps for hiding and egg laying.

I also use a shallow, glazed clay dish for water, and a cheaply constructed "tortoise house" for a hide box. The house is open on the bottom, and it rests on a layer of bricks that are buried in the soil. This way the torts can come inside in wet weather and not have to rest on damp or muddy ground.

I put my guys out when the daytime temps achieve a high in the mid 60s and don't drop much below 50 at night. If it's raining and below 55-55 I'll bring them it at night, otherwise they are out 24/7 from approximately late March to late September-early November, depending on the weather.

My guys are pretty tough and can handle temps from the 40s to to almost 110 without problem. Just give 'em a place to get out of the rain and sun and they'll be fine. But, my animals were well established and healthy before I tried this.

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