http://bitmek.com/garrett/
It looks like this little boy, Garrett, got the coolest gift in 2005 from his kindergarten teacher. A tortoise he named Duke. I'm guessing his parents are the ones maintaining the website for him, but Duke is over 8 years old (and thankfully male to match his name!). I know I worry about my evil twins, and others here might also worry about their hatchlings.
I am super glad I found this web page. From the looks of it it seems like Duke grows about an inch per year in length, no weights listed sadly, but I've given up and resigned myself to the fact that Morgan's going to be a whopper. Before I found a a study showing that in the first two years of life they gain 30% mass per year in the wild.
If you keep track of plastron length rather than generalized carapace length I have a PDF link to a USGS study about tortoises in the wild, but it isn't as accurate to compare them.
http://www.werc.usgs.gov/fileHandler.ashx?File=/Lists/Products/Attachments/4815/Long-Term Growth.pdf
If anyone has anything to add to this please feel free. I've been searching high and low for growth charts for desert tortoises, wild or captive.
It looks like this little boy, Garrett, got the coolest gift in 2005 from his kindergarten teacher. A tortoise he named Duke. I'm guessing his parents are the ones maintaining the website for him, but Duke is over 8 years old (and thankfully male to match his name!). I know I worry about my evil twins, and others here might also worry about their hatchlings.
I am super glad I found this web page. From the looks of it it seems like Duke grows about an inch per year in length, no weights listed sadly, but I've given up and resigned myself to the fact that Morgan's going to be a whopper. Before I found a a study showing that in the first two years of life they gain 30% mass per year in the wild.
If you keep track of plastron length rather than generalized carapace length I have a PDF link to a USGS study about tortoises in the wild, but it isn't as accurate to compare them.
http://www.werc.usgs.gov/fileHandler.ashx?File=/Lists/Products/Attachments/4815/Long-Term Growth.pdf
If anyone has anything to add to this please feel free. I've been searching high and low for growth charts for desert tortoises, wild or captive.