Posted by:
mrcota
at Wed Feb 22 06:21:40 2006 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by mrcota ]
Hello Susan,
I am in SE Asia (north of Bangkok). Our weather is similar to yours, except ours tends to get a little bit hotter (today it was 35°C).
We should have similar vegetables available to what you have. My Star Tortoise diet consists of the following:
50%+ Grass (*Mixture of wild grasses and Tropical Carpet Grass), the other 50%- Mustard Greens, Chinese Morning Glory, Water Cress, a little bit of Okra, Thai Butternut Squash (they call it pumpkin here), and twice a week, they receive a portion of papaya. Every other day they receive vitamin/calcium supplement. Cuttlefish bone is available in their daytime and nighttime enclosures.
* As finely manicured as Singapore is (I have been there about a dozen times- love it), I am certain that they use A LOT of chemicals for fertilizer and pesticides, so be careful where you get your grass!
If you can not find those vegetables at the regular markets, try the “Golden Mile” shopping center; they have most everything from Thailand.
Daily husbandry routine:
EARLY: prepare salad (takes an hour to prepare all my herbivore salads).
Daybreak: Take them outside/place in front of water for 10 minutes (water remains available throughout the day). After 10 minutes, I feed them.
Day: They receive direct sunshine from 08:00-11:00 (make sure they have at least a small area they can get out of the sun- our hot tropical sun can cook them) and are outside in the shade for the rest of the day. They currently have an outside permanent enclosure where they can decide how much sun or shade they are going to receive.
Evening: Take them inside to the small indoor enclosure, where they are exposed to a couple hours of UVB light. In the cooler months (Dec-Feb), they have access to a ceramic heater if they get cold.
I clean my tortoises once every 1-2 weeks, always in the morning before basking, with a soft toothbrush, dry them off right away and allow them to completely dry when they bask.
Toilet training? Good luck. The Japanese use “tortoise diapers” but I would not subject my tortoises to such demeaning treatment and I could not imagine the feces being stuck to the tortoise as being very healthy.
Cheers,
Michael
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RE: Raising Star Tortoise in Singapore - mrcota, Wed Feb 22 06:21:40 2006
