Housing Babies Together?

casstom702

New Member
Joined
Jun 17, 2021
Messages
16
Location (City and/or State)
Las Vegas
I went through that one too. My veiled once took a bite of the ficus tree in his cage. Worrying about the toxicity of ficus, I swapped it out for other stuff. Never had that problem with any other cham species.
I'm pretty sure knowledge is learning from others' mistakes (i.e. you can be knowledgeable about a topic without having experience) and wisdom is learning from your own mistakes.
 

Tom

The Dog Trainer
10 Year Member!
Platinum Tortoise Club
Joined
Jan 9, 2010
Messages
63,264
Location (City and/or State)
Southern California
I'm pretty sure knowledge is learning from others' mistakes (i.e. you can be knowledgeable about a topic without having experience) and wisdom is learning from your own mistakes.
Want to argue about it?
 

Tom

The Dog Trainer
10 Year Member!
Platinum Tortoise Club
Joined
Jan 9, 2010
Messages
63,264
Location (City and/or State)
Southern California
No, it's not true that you can't keep tortoises in pairs or groups.
Source: Michael Tuma, PhD

Here's the thing though: it's safer if they grow up together, you need a LOT more room (in my experience, two torts need at least four times the amount of space as one tort), torts have personalities, and often these personalities clash (for example, tort A and tort B may get along great, tort B and tort C may also get along great, put the three of them together and they may get along great... or try to kill each other). The reason why everyone is always so against keeping them in pairs and groups is 1) because they can live alone just fine, 2) need enough space that they can have separate "territories" and aren't forced to socialize constantly because of lack of living space, 3) it's a crapshoot whether or not two torts will be friendly or constantly attack each other, oh and 4) torts that seem like the best of buddies may start hurting each other during mating season. I have a large property and eight torts. Two always live alone, two always live together, and the other four consist of three females and a male. The females live together most of the time and I pair them with the male one at a time during mating season. And before any of them lived together, they'd have a month or two of supervised visits so I felt confidant that they got along. It's a lot of work and entirely unnecessary if you have the facilities to house them separately.

You'll learn that torts are very complex creatures; therefore, there are rarely absolutes in regard to their care and husbandry (besides things like absolutely never throw your tort in your swimming pool nor feed them only iceberg lettuce, let's not be smart @$$es now).
No one here says they can't be kept in groups. Pairs are the problem. And they are a problem whether you realize it or not. Groups of juveniles usually get along fine, and that happens to be my preferred way to raise the species that I work with.

Before you come back with a saucy retort, please go back and read at least some of the last decade of arguing about this topic. I'm not wasting hours of my time with a new member that joins and then wants to school the veterans here. I've kept 100s of tortoises, started 1000s of babies. Your experience sounds lovely, but there are people in the world that know more than you.
 

Mrs.Jennifer

Well-Known Member
Tortoise Club
Platinum Tortoise Club
Joined
Jul 22, 2020
Messages
673
Location (City and/or State)
Norwich CT
I think you missed my point. Questions should be asked because one is truly seeking more knowledge—not to be validated. Asking questions should show a desire to be “coachable.”
 

ZEROPILOT

REDFOOT WRANGLER
Moderator
Tortoise Club
5 Year Member
Platinum Tortoise Club
Joined
Jul 16, 2014
Messages
28,938
Location (City and/or State)
South Eastern Florida (U.S.A.)/Rock Hill S.C.
I only keep Redfoot.
Most will agree that RF may just be the calmest and most tolerant of the tortoises as far as bullying intruders.
To make that even "better", I only keep females and sub adult males. So the risk of territorial issues are cut down yet again.
BUT, I've got to tell you that no matter how much space....And I have outdoors enclosures....Two of even Redfoot females ends in 24/7 issues about 90% of the time.
So, it's not too bad EVERY TIME.
But so often that I'm not trying it again. And for the benefit of others, I will never reccomend trying it.
30 years ago I kept a pair of adult Redfoot in an all too small 200 sf outdoors enclosure and I thought that their behavior was 100% natural. And a lot of the now ancient information seemed to confirm that at the time. Mostly library books. And written by doctors and zoos usually.
Now I'm horrified and embarrassed by it. But I was doing everything as best as I could with the information I had.
My observations cover about 35 years of trial and error hands on experience.
Ad that to the experience of our other members and the facts seem pretty solid. And may equal a few thousand years of combined experience.
However, NO TWO of us have the exact same location, availability to build giant enclosures or have had the exact same animals. So it's true that some small variations of exceptions to this rule may exist.
But I hope you can see how mentioning that is horribly ill advised. Since even then it is at best stressful and unnatural for them and never 100% without issue.
It's simply fact.
And maybe an inconvenient one that tortoise pairs are a horrible idea.
We must always place our conveniences and our wants below what is best for our animals the moment we discover that what we are doing is wrong. And not feel guilty or get argumentative about being corrected.
Sometimes we find out that most of what we thought we knew or that most of the equipment we spent hundred$ on are pure garbage. Or even that a trusted longterm mentor is totally off base...
Now we as tortoise keepers have this great wealth of information. It's up to the minute and ever growing and changing.
What a waste it would be to not take advantage of this.
 
Last edited:

Jan A

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jan 9, 2021
Messages
1,808
Location (City and/or State)
Boulder, CO
I think you missed my point. Questions should be asked because one is truly seeking more knowledge—not to be validated. Asking questions should show a desire to be “coachable.”
We also used to call questions asked for validation purposes "three legged dog" questions. Since it was night school & because most of us had day jobs, we groaned a lot.

Your view is always the same if you're not the lead dog even when you think you"re the lead dog, IMHAO.
 
Top