Hi All, brand new member from the UK here. Got our first tortoise yesterday (Horsefield/Russian) and so naturally have been doing nothing but googling tortoise related stuff ever since! Seemed to be lots of good info here so naturally decided to join up.
After getting him home yesterday he seemed to be happy enough. Had a good explore of his enclosure, immediately went and sat in his water bowl for a bit, had a bite to eat and explored some more. However, since about 18:00 last night he has buried himself down in his hide and hasn't moved. It is now 16:00 the next day and he still hasn't moved. My wife has lifted the hide briefly to check on him and he moved a little then but didn't feel like coming out.
As I understand it baby tortoises tend to sleep a lot anyway and particularly when put in a new enclosure but I was wondering at what point do we start to worry that he isn't coming out of his hide?! I don't want to add to his stress by messing with him if we don't have to but we're also getting a bit anxious about his total lack of activity.
For info, we have him in quite a large vivarium. Heated to about 85 at one end, about 75 the other. The hide is directly under the heatlamp but we don't have a basking spot for him yet (He tried to climb onto the hide early on, stopped a moment but then fell off climbing back down). We have a UV light for him that we turned off overnight but switched back on this morning.
After getting him home yesterday he seemed to be happy enough. Had a good explore of his enclosure, immediately went and sat in his water bowl for a bit, had a bite to eat and explored some more. However, since about 18:00 last night he has buried himself down in his hide and hasn't moved. It is now 16:00 the next day and he still hasn't moved. My wife has lifted the hide briefly to check on him and he moved a little then but didn't feel like coming out.
As I understand it baby tortoises tend to sleep a lot anyway and particularly when put in a new enclosure but I was wondering at what point do we start to worry that he isn't coming out of his hide?! I don't want to add to his stress by messing with him if we don't have to but we're also getting a bit anxious about his total lack of activity.
For info, we have him in quite a large vivarium. Heated to about 85 at one end, about 75 the other. The hide is directly under the heatlamp but we don't have a basking spot for him yet (He tried to climb onto the hide early on, stopped a moment but then fell off climbing back down). We have a UV light for him that we turned off overnight but switched back on this morning.