Does my rescue Russian look healthy?

heidi250273

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We recently rescued this little fella, he's approx 3 years old and when we got him he was filthy and smelly with his eyes stuck together. We gave him a bath and realised he had this lovely coloured shell, he was brown all over when we got him. We fed him variants of veg along with calcium supplements and he has flourished. He put on 55 grams in 3 weeks. We feed him on a mixture of holistic food and greens. At the moment he is in a small Viv but we are in the process of building him a 2 level enclosure. We've never owned tortoises before but have found the forum invaluable. He is such a character and loves to have his shell rubbed and play with a Ping pong ball. My question is, does he look healthy? Thank you forum.
 

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Yvonne G

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Hi Heidi, and welcome to the Forum!

Your new baby looks to be a captive-bred russian tortoise. He looks great! You did a good job cleaning him up.

I'm a little concerned about the food in the dish. What is that? In my opinion, a manufactured pellet is ok for once in a while, but the main diet should be leafy greens and weeds.
 

heidi250273

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Hi Yvonne, the food is Komodo complete holistic tortoise diet, he gets this once a week and loves it. He is always given leafy greens and has plenty of fresh water. Do you advise not giving him the pellets?
 

Yvonne G

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No, I don't advise that. How you do it is perfectly acceptable. I personally give my tortoises a manufactured diet once a week too. And in the UK, the Komodo food is what we recommend.
 

heidi250273

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Many thanks for your advice, being a tort newbie I want to make sure Shelvy is being cared for correctly :) Hope to post some photos of his new house once it's finished!
 

Yvonne G

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Looking forward to that.
 

northernturtleman

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I think you are off to a great start. Also, I really am impressed with the set up and really glad you chosen a rescue tort that's awesome.

Sent from my LG-LS720 using Tapatalk
 

heidi250273

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Hi WillTort2, the substrate I use is this
ImageUploadedByTortForum1391387448.764320.jpg it feels really moist and Shelvy burrows right down into it. I did use a finer substrate but it was dusty and I was forever dampening it down, it also seemed to irritate his eyes. I read on somewhere that tortoises might confuse these little white bits with food but I haven't seen that with Shelvy
 
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lynnedit

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Your tortoise looks to be thriving, and you are doing a good job meeting his needs and adjusting as you go.

I'm looking forward to his new enclosure too! Well done.

Perhaps in the summer, he can have a little area outside as well.
 

WillTort2

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Hi Heidi, I looked up that substrate and found the following.

"Tortoise life is a 50:50 mixture of high quality top soil and play sand with a little limestone grit added to provide some Calcium if the substrate is eaten."

I think I've read on the forum that the use of cuttlebone and a balanced diet will eliminate the need for the limestone grit.

I believe that a plain top soil combined with coco coir might provide less danger of impaction and hold moisture better.

Their website also advises replacing the substrate every 3 weeks. It seems that their intention is to keep you buying substrate way too frequently. If you add a few pill bugs to your substrate they will help clean and delay the replacement process.
 

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