Ivory Sulcata Tortoise Questions

[Nobody]

Forgive the ignorance but what is an Ivory Sulcata tortoise?How does it differ from a common Sulcata tortoise?Are they found in the wild?If not,how did they come about?Are they as hardy as common Sulcatas ?Do they require a special care or maintenance as compared to the common Sulcata?
Thanks.

 

[t_mclellan]

Ask & you shall receive!

http://ivorytortoise.com/

 

[moswen]

in a nutshell, ivory sulcatas look like an albino sulcata, but they have dark dark ruby red (almost black) eyes that are not bothered by the sun, so you can house them outside. the only "special" thing you might have to watch out for is the degree of inbreeding (since they came from a brother/sister combo they are all inbred) but you can breed an ivory with a normal sulcata, and their offspring will all look normal, but they will carry the ivory gene. meaning, if you breed an ivory with two unrelated normal sulcatas, they may be bred together to produce another ivory, that is a little less inbred than offspring produced from ivory sulcata that has been bred to his sister. but i don't know how much inbreeding has been causing problems as of yet, since the first offspring of the first ivories are just now coming of age to breed. and they were first produced by richard fife in 2000.

mine is a second generation ivory, he came from gerardo martinez who purchased an "unrelated" pair from richard fife. (unrelated as in they have different mothers but the same father) lol, i'll let you know if mine has any problems!