About to be proud owner of Marginated tortoise!

[Ralph_]

Hello all! I'm a total newbie at tortoise keeping and, whilst researching how to keep them, I stumbled onto this website so decided to come say hello!

Any tips on how to keep a marginated tortoise would be greatly appreciated as I've read a lot about how the wrong diet or tempreture can lead to pyramiding and other such health problems so I'm trying to make sure I can care for my tortoise properly.

The place I'm collecting them from said they're about 1 year old and in good health

P.S. I'm thinking about naming them Plod

 

[Yvonne G]

Hi Ralph, and welcome to the Forum!

You say "them." Does this mean you're getting two? Quite a few new tortoise people make the mistake of thinking a tortoise needs a sidekick to be happy. This is total opposite from the truth. Tortoises are solitary animals, not herd animals, and they are very territorial. This means they try to chase other tortoises out of their territory. The more submissive of the two will then stop eating, stay hiding and just try to stay out of the other tortoise's sight. This results in one tortoise seeming to be active and growing while the other seems to be failing and not growing. If you want two, do them both a favor and buy two of everything so you can set up two completely different enclosures.

 

[Yvonne G]

Here's a link to a very good care sheet:

https://tortoiseforum.org/threads/marginated-tortoise-testudo-marginata-care-sheet.98564/

 

[Ralph_]

Only one tortoise, should have clarified, Thanks for the info, i'll look forward to joining the tortoise community!

 

[TechnoCheese]

Welcome to the forum!

Pyramiding is not caused by any of those things. It’s caused solely and completely by lack of humidity.

Be sure to look around the marginated section of the forum

 

[Ray--Opo]

Welcome you have come to the right place!