I am very excited to announce that we have 4 new additions to the TFO Mod Team. For various personal reasons, some of our existing mods haven't had as free time to spend online. As a result, we've been running VERY lean as far as mods go. We were way overdue for bringing on new volunteers and I apologize for that.
We should be back on track now though. These 4 individuals are already great assets to the TFO community and I know they will be great additions to our existing Mod Team.
Please afford them the same respect you would give me. They are 100% volunteer and they are here for the love of the hobby - not to ruin anyone's day.
Please welcome Jaizei, Wellington, Tortadise, and mctlong to our fantastic team of moderators.
I would like to thank all 4 of you for d... Read More

TFO will be going down for at least a few hours either tonight or tomorrow. We are working hard to optimize the site to speed up load times and get rid of pesky Internal Server Error pages. These optimizations are also one step toward our new mobile app. Thank you for your continued patience. I will do my best to get TFO back up and running ASAP.

UPSIDE DOWN TORTOISE
by Douglas R. Mader, MS, DVM, & Carl M. Palazzolo, DVM

Question – I came home fro work yesterday and found my California desert tortoise flipped over in the backyard. It was alive when I found it, so I righted it and left it alone. The next morning when I woke up I went outside to check on it and found it dead! Why do you suppose that it died? It looked good when I found it.

Answer – We are very sorry to hear about the loss of your pet tortoise. Unfortunately, this is a story which we hear a number of times during the summer at our practice. There are many reasons why your tortoise died.

In the wild if a tortoise were to flip itself over, it would surely die. Therefore, evolutionarily, it is not adaptive for an animal to put itself in precarious positions which might endanger it. However, for some reason, we hear about backyard tortoises which will consistently flip themselves over by attempting to climb up objects in the yard, losing their balanc... Read More

I hope you all have safe and happy holidays! Enjoy the time off, the food, the family, the friends, however you celebrate.
Enjoy yourselves!

Congratulations Winners! And THANK YOU to all who participated! These contests are always a blast to run. This year's calendar looks like it will be one of our best ever! The winners below are listed from 1st place to 12th.

I need the winners to email their ORIGINAL UN-RESIZED, UN-DOCTORED, UN-CROPPED photo to contests@tortoiseforum.org ASAP! This will help ensure we can get the calendar order into the printer and begin taking PRE-ORDERS! Don't forget a collage of all entries from this year will be added as one of the images on the calendar. Here are the contest rules.

Thanks again to everyone for making this contest a success!

p.s. Am I the only one STOKED that Yvonne made the calendar?! I think that's our first ever human in the calendar!

p.p.s. pre-order your 2013 tortoise forum calendar now!

Number 1 - The Star Clock/Chris
[img]http://www.tortoisefo... Read More

You may REvote for UP TO 3 photos. You may also vote for only 1 or 2. Once your vote has been submitted, there will be no altering of that vote. Please do not ask.
Do not try to register several accounts to skew the results - we carefully check for this and other methods of cheating.
You can click on the photo to view it full-size.
Any questions? Post them below.

MAY THE BEST PHOTOS WIN!

Time for our fifth Annual Tortoise Forum Calendar Photo Contest and the 2013 Edition of our much sought after Tortoise Forum Calendar! For those who are not familiar with this annual tradition, toward the end of the year we hold a contest where all members are encouraged to submit their best tortoise photo. Then we all vote for our favorites, which are then published in a Tortoise Forum Calendar.

This year we will be doing photo submissions differently, and we'll tell you how at the bottom of this message.

You must have been a member for the previous 30 days (from Sept. 12) to enter this contest.
Please, only ONE entry per household.

Entries should be submitted until September 30, 2012 @ 11:59PM PST after which the voting will begin.

The top 12 voted photos will be printed in the 2013 Tortoise Forum Calendar (12 months and one cover) along with a collage of ALL of this year's entries.

The photo with the most TOTAL votes will receive a $100 gift card to LLLReptile.com!

- Y... Read More