Recent content by chicagojohn

I'm going to tell all of you something very clearly before I leave here. Listen to me and think about this. Trade in chelonians has become a business. People make a lot of money from this. Because of their intricate attachment to environment, chelonians are possibly the worst possible...

Please, Oh Lord, I pray, If reincarnation is true DO NOT allow me to come back as a tortoise IF said tortoise is "cared for" by a human being. If you GUARANTEE I can live out my days in the wild, OK. If not, bring me back as something that can. But whatever You do, Oh Lord, NOT as a...

I think this is a boy based upon the indentation in the plastron. You will know for sure if you put a resin tortoise in his pen and notice him humping it and making a sqeaking noise..... That's what our tortoise did, and we then knew unequivocally that it was a boy.

So, for anyone interested, this is the outcome thus far: We saw our herp vet today (recommended to me by Darrell Seneke in 2004 when our tort almost died from a misdiagnosed bladder stone). He found that the remaining distance between scute and plastron is adequate for the cloaca, or...

I would avoid the dandelion greens at the market. These look like dandelion greens but are chicory, not the same at all as dandelion. Chicory has a very unbalanced calcium-to-phosphorus ratio. I highly recommend you go to some place where they don't spray weed killer, like a forest preserve...

The single best reference I've seen, and I have not done a comprehensive literature search, is Andy Highfields book: Practical Encyclopedia of Keeping and Breeding Tortoises and Fresh Water Turtles. It is out of print, but I checked the other day and you can pick up a used copy for around $40...

I agree with all of the above comments in that the calcium content will remain the same. If it has vitamin D3 in it, as Tom said, that will degrade over time. This degradation is related to storage temperature; as a rule of thumb, degradation rate doubles every 10°C. We keep ours in a...

I'm new here, but I want to express my thoughts for the benefit of those contemplating taking care of a tortoise. These comments are based upon 18 years of experience with one specific chelonian, Ball, a Testudo ibera. The following is based upon an impromptu reply I wrote to someone in the...

Each tortoise, genus and species, is different. There is definitely not a best way. Tortoises evolved to fit their environments. Unlike us humans, they are not very adaptable. You can either take my word for this or learn it the hard way. :) Think of a tortoise as a key that fits a...

And, now that you mentioned, especially in his later years, I think his head looked a lot like a tortoise....

If this were a wear issue, it would not be so uniformly distributed. At one time, we were also concerned about the coloration inside our tortoise's mouth. It was from the food being eaten; something the original colors change from oxidation in the air or interaction with tort saliva. Our...

The urates are perfectly normal. You've heard of "number 1" and "number 2"; well for torts, urates are "number 3", and what you describe is ideal in consistency. I would suggest soaking in luke warm water (around 85°F) maybe every other day. That couldn't hurt anything and would help to make...

Thanks so much for the welcome. Nice there are so many friendly people here. :)

Thanks for the advice. I also wrote to an old teacher, Andy Highfield, and got the following note back. Now I feel a little better about what the outcome might be. I'm sharing this with you for general information in the event you run into this again. Hi John, Yes, I have seen that. We had...