Farm bred vs Wild Caught

tgirl23

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Hi I was wondering what exactly does farm bred mean? I've seen a lot of reptile shops say that their tortoises come from farms. Is that any better than wild caught? The poor tortoise I saw the other day had the saddest shell so I get the feeling that farm bred isn't much better. Thoughts?
 

Kapidolo Farms

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Great avatar image.

Farm bred is somewhat ill-defined, like the way 'organic' was many years ago. Now organic means specific things and using it means certain things.

Farm bred usually means that the tortoises are in a managed situation outside in the native range or in a climate that is more or less like the native range. Food and water are supplemented from 'natural' graze as the population density will be higher. Eggs may be left to hatch on their own, or are collected and artificially incubated.

A little less 'in the natural range' might be where someone has built a large structure (greenhouse) to facilitate emulating a suitable year round climate.

What was once called 'farmed' for red-eared sliders was to annually collect 1,000's of females from the wild just prior to egg laying, put them in stock ponds, let them lay eggs, and then release those females again so that their own natural environment was doing all the support. Then that progressed to holding the female and some males and giving a 'power diet' so they could produce more eggs, but still stocking the ponds with wild caught females. I believe now the whole cycle is used for red-eared sliders such that they dependency on wild caught stock is very limited.

Neonate to producing adults (egg to egg) is a slow cycle for tortoises and so most 'farmed' animals are likely wild caught as adults and held in managed areas.

These definitions as I have explained them would seem to describe what people want these terms to mean, and some folks actually fully comply with egg to egg. But most at this stage are managed large populations of wild caught founders for a managed production.

The line between wild and managed is getting ever fuzzier as fences now seem to keep animals in (cattle), as much as people out (zoo).
 

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