Hi guys,In addition to what @Tom just said, the best advice / suggestion I can give you about Chersina is to stay away from wild caught specimens. Take the time to find CB animals (and not CB in South Africa - those are not CB no matter what the sales guy tells you). Find a breeder in Europe and get young CB animals and grow them up. CB chersina are super hearty and don't seem to have any of the issues we classically associate with chersina in the US.
If you are curious about hibernation temps, look at the annual temps in South Africa or El Cajon, CA. you will see that winters are wet and temps are generally in the upper 40's to low 50's at night and upper 50's during the day. That goes on for 3 months or so in SA.
From My side not so much, (you can go and have a look at my thread Kang and Rue - and you should be able to see their growth rate etc. I started it when I found them) I am not that experienced but the little bit that I have had with mine is that they are all different and grow at different rates. But I will say this, if they are brought up from the get go in ideal conditions then they grow really well and quite fast. When brought up under dry conditions I have found (Like my first one - I only changed his growing conditions when he was over 6 months old. It was somewhere between 6months and a year. I would have to go back and check his thread to get the correct time frame ) that they grow at a much slower rate. Interestingly there is another lady who on the odd occasion posts thread on the wild ones found in her garden and they grow at a much slower rate than the CB ones, or at least my CB ones. But then again there is a huge difference when comparing notes from various sources compared to just from one source. As far as I know TFO is still compiling data with regards to the Angulate Tortoises. However whenever I have issues, I always consult Mark, Sterant and Tom.Hi Carol,
Thanks for your contribution. The temps you mentioned when keeping them inside are the temps I will achieve in their Greenhouse outside. This can also be achieved during Winter when the Greenhouses are insulated but preferably will allow hibernation. Again. If it doesn't work out I have the capability to bring them in.
When it gets really cold the CHE's will do their work just as they do with the hermans. Not that I am comparing them but have all the data on hand to allow for exact temps to be achieved in the greenhouses.
Are their any growth charts on hand for the Chersina's somewhere so i can have a comparison to keep a sort of track?
Thats good. I hope it all goes well. CB is certainly the way to go. And back to the original start of this post - we hibernated the male again out at @Tom 's place this year. Went really well and the male is doing great, so thats 2 years of outdoor living in California. Tom is planning to outline a hibernation process here sometime soon.HI all,
It has been a while but in the mean time I have decided to reserve 2 Angulata's from a breeder in Valencia spain. There are not many European breeders that have CB so when I came across the breeder, we starting chatting I felt very comfortable with him so decided to make a reservation on 2 of them.
With the Covid still around I am not sure when I will have them but will keep you guys in the loop on how things work out. The goal still is to keep them out all year around so plenty of time to setup their enclosures and start testing. If you guys want I will post an update every now and often on how I am setting things up.
Cheers all.
Koen