Found tortoise in NEED fast!

[Frankiesauce]

Alright, I'm sure you guys know me from posting about problems I've had previously with my Sulcata Tortoise. I went to Bill's Pet Shop, just wanted to look around. I happen to look in a little tank and found a sulcata tortoise for sale. I was shocked to see it's living conditions. It was in sand that obviously hadn't been cleaned out in what seemed like since it had been put in that pathetic cage. There was feces all over the place, they were feeding her Romaine lettuce. I'm going to post a picture of this. I don't know what to do. They are selling this tortoise for $350 I can't afford it. These living conditions are unacceptable. The picture makes the tank look bigger than it is because of the angle I had to take the picture. It was about 17 inches long assuming. Click here to see the picture.

 

[Yvonne G]

The tortoise is already starting to show pyramiding. I've found that if you print out a good care sheet like this one:

http://www.chelonia.org/articles/sulcatacare.htm

or this one:

http://africantortoise.com/sulcata.htm

and take it to the pet shop, ask to talk to the manager, and be VERY HUMBLE, not a know-it-all, they usually take your advice on caring for the tortoise to heart. This tortoise needs to be put on a moist substrate to help its shell grow smoothly.

There was a law passed last year that told pet shops they had to pass out a care sheet with EVERY animal that they sold. They were pretty good about it the first couple months. But now I never see them pass care sheets out. Maybe you can help this little tortoise by talking to the manager and giving him a care sheet. Good luck!

Yvonne

 

[Maggie Cummings]

And it looks like she is already starting to pyramid.
So what you do is you first print out a care sheet and go in with that in hand. You explain to the manager or owner about the lack of care and you give them the care sheet. You wait a week and go back in and if nothing has changed you offer to set the tort up correctly, if you really want to help that baby you become the squeekie wheel. The old saying it's the squeekie wheel that gets the grease. I'll give you a link to Toby...you show them Toby and tell them that is what is happening to that baby because of the lack of correct care. After you've done all that and nothing has changed let me know and I'll come up with other ideas. Where is this tortoise?

http://africantortoise.com/

http://turtlerescues.com/images/Sulcata _Toby.jpg

I see Yvonne beat me to it because she can type faster...ha ha . But she didn't have a link to Toby and that's an impressive picture...

 

[Crazy1]

you might even want to print out the pyramiding sheet at http://africantortoise.com and a pic of a healthy Sully from their so they can see what a healthy tort should look like.

 

[tortoisenerd]

All I have to add is that sadly this is almost typical for pet stores. I've never seen a pet in ideal conditions, and most of the time it's deplorable conditions, bad diet, and the animal looks very sickly. It's got to the point I can't look at animals in pet stores. Just too sad. Best you can do in my opinion is give this method a shot. Many many other animals out there like this though. Typically it's ignorance, other times the people at the store actually think they are caring for the animal well, from whatever someone else told them. Don't think that taking this animal out of this situation will do anything though--they will just replace it. That's why I agree with trying to change the behavior/care.