Desert Tortoise Care Sheet?

GardenDmpls

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This is interesting. When I was a teen in the 1960s I did turtle/tortoise rescue in Texas. Basically I would take Berlanders (Texas gopher) tortoises that were hit by cars, use sulfur (perhaps sulfa) powder from the vet and masking tape (no other tape available back then) and repair their shells. They were almost all males, as they were the ones out wandering across the roads looking for females. They were kept in a large courtyard with a few homemade ponds (this was in Corpus Christi) and plenty of veggies (less than perfect discards- not rotten, just ugly or over-bought) from a nearby supermarket, and fresh grazing, so no fighting over food and water access. They only had run-ins during breeding season and then only when we had the one female, but they had space to retreat. Eventually I released them all in the Welder Wildlife Refuge.
 

Yvonne G

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The difference being keeping them indoors as opposed to outside in a large well planted yard. The OP was asking about babies, which would be kept indoors. There's isn't an indoor enclosure big enough to safely house two tortoises.
 

GardenDmpls

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Ah, I see. We were lucky to have that courtyard set-up. You could look out from any part of the house. Besides the gophers, had musk turtles, box turtles, red eared sliders and a few others, as well as a horned lizard. We called that a horney toad- My Mom said," If they were, there would be more of them". Went right over my head- we were more innocent then. Part of the area was grass, part tropical vegetation and there was a concrete paver patio and areas of decorative river rocks of all sizes, so they had a pretty good choice of where to be. The ponds were hard plastic kiddie pools sunk into the ground. There was also bamboo. They got piles of tomatoes, cabbage, lettuce, cucumbers and so forth.
 

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