SarahTucker06
New Member
Good morning all,
Apologies in advance for the long post - trying to give as much info as possible!
I rescued a 6 year old Horsefield Tort from a school last year. He was living in a tiny table with, eating mainly blueberries and lettuce, he had the wrong kind of substrate, no natural light and basically hid all day. He had also received a head injury having been trodden on. We got him in July and had him vet checked and thankfully he is fine! I made sure I did all the reading beforehand and bought the biggest ready made table that I could (4ft x 2ft), filled it with a mixture of soil type substrate, wood chippings and stones etc. He has his basking light, a large hide, water bowl and a few nick nacks in there for entertainment. He seems to love his table and bombs up and down it. I feed him on a mixture of weeds, salad leaves, dried tortoise nuggets and dried tortoise flowers etc.
The only problem I have is that he constantly headbutts, bangs and claws at the glass sides! These have a pattern on the lower half so he can't see out but he still does it! Sometimes for hours!! He insists on climbing up the side of his house in a bid for freedom and generally falls off... At the school, the lady who used to have him used to let him out to run in one of the classrooms from time to time and I had been doing the same until I read on here that its a bad idea. I used to let him run around my kitchen (supervised) after the floors had been hoovered. I had set up a basking light for him in the corner and popped bits of food around for him to find. We have no other pets to bother him and my children are tortoise savvy... He seemed pretty chilled out whilst out of his table and as soon as he was worn out, i'd pop him back. He would sleep for an hour or so, then go back to head banging! I read on another post that they shouldn't be allowed to roam the house so gradually stopped this but the head banging has gotten so much worse when he isn't allowed out!
We live in London UK so the weather is generally damp which means I can't really build something permanent in the garden for him (as i'm told Horsefields and damp weather aren't friends), and we have a large number of cats and foxes in the area...
Can anyone suggest what i'm doing wrong please? Or anything I can try? I absolutely adore the little pickle and want him to be happy and content, not constantly trying to give himself brain damage!
Thank you in advance
Apologies in advance for the long post - trying to give as much info as possible!
I rescued a 6 year old Horsefield Tort from a school last year. He was living in a tiny table with, eating mainly blueberries and lettuce, he had the wrong kind of substrate, no natural light and basically hid all day. He had also received a head injury having been trodden on. We got him in July and had him vet checked and thankfully he is fine! I made sure I did all the reading beforehand and bought the biggest ready made table that I could (4ft x 2ft), filled it with a mixture of soil type substrate, wood chippings and stones etc. He has his basking light, a large hide, water bowl and a few nick nacks in there for entertainment. He seems to love his table and bombs up and down it. I feed him on a mixture of weeds, salad leaves, dried tortoise nuggets and dried tortoise flowers etc.
The only problem I have is that he constantly headbutts, bangs and claws at the glass sides! These have a pattern on the lower half so he can't see out but he still does it! Sometimes for hours!! He insists on climbing up the side of his house in a bid for freedom and generally falls off... At the school, the lady who used to have him used to let him out to run in one of the classrooms from time to time and I had been doing the same until I read on here that its a bad idea. I used to let him run around my kitchen (supervised) after the floors had been hoovered. I had set up a basking light for him in the corner and popped bits of food around for him to find. We have no other pets to bother him and my children are tortoise savvy... He seemed pretty chilled out whilst out of his table and as soon as he was worn out, i'd pop him back. He would sleep for an hour or so, then go back to head banging! I read on another post that they shouldn't be allowed to roam the house so gradually stopped this but the head banging has gotten so much worse when he isn't allowed out!
We live in London UK so the weather is generally damp which means I can't really build something permanent in the garden for him (as i'm told Horsefields and damp weather aren't friends), and we have a large number of cats and foxes in the area...
Can anyone suggest what i'm doing wrong please? Or anything I can try? I absolutely adore the little pickle and want him to be happy and content, not constantly trying to give himself brain damage!
Thank you in advance