BackYardTortoise
New Member
Hi all! I found this forum about a month ago when I was researching into tortoise care and I've already learned a ton and love the community here. We just bought a house with a large backyard (large for Mesa, Arizona) and want to get a backyard tortoise. We are going to apply to adopt a Desert Sonoran Tortoise with the AZ Fish & Wildlife.
Instead of being hasty though we decided to take things slow and steady to prepare our backyard to make it a paradise for our future Sonoran Desert Tortoise, starting with it's food!
The house came with a very large grass plot, but I wanted to add shrubs. We now have 9 hibiscus plants (4 desert blue and 5 of the typical variety), 6 globe Mallows (more to come), 3 fairy duster bushes, 2 ruella bushes, and lots of evening primrose planted. We also have 4 pads of the spineless variety of prickly pear almost ready to plant once they scab over at the bottom. Not all plants are pictured below but I mostly wanted to show the amount of grass since that's a lot of a tortoises diet.
Question! Is it reasonable to assume that all this landscaping should be sufficient to keep a Sonoran Desert Tortoise full and happy all year round? We weren't planning on doing much supplemental feeding other than the occasional treat. Of course no fertilizers/weed killers on our plants!
Our next step is to get the burrow created (doing an in-ground one) and getting the grass much greener. Our ETA on getting our tortoise is May/June of this year after we give our plants a chance to establish. Again, we don't want to be hasty and want this to be done right.
Just wanted to say hello officially and gauge if it's realistic to think a tortoise can thrive with the amount of plants listed above. I'll post again once the burrow is built and another post once we have our tortoise! We're very excited!
Instead of being hasty though we decided to take things slow and steady to prepare our backyard to make it a paradise for our future Sonoran Desert Tortoise, starting with it's food!
The house came with a very large grass plot, but I wanted to add shrubs. We now have 9 hibiscus plants (4 desert blue and 5 of the typical variety), 6 globe Mallows (more to come), 3 fairy duster bushes, 2 ruella bushes, and lots of evening primrose planted. We also have 4 pads of the spineless variety of prickly pear almost ready to plant once they scab over at the bottom. Not all plants are pictured below but I mostly wanted to show the amount of grass since that's a lot of a tortoises diet.
Question! Is it reasonable to assume that all this landscaping should be sufficient to keep a Sonoran Desert Tortoise full and happy all year round? We weren't planning on doing much supplemental feeding other than the occasional treat. Of course no fertilizers/weed killers on our plants!
Our next step is to get the burrow created (doing an in-ground one) and getting the grass much greener. Our ETA on getting our tortoise is May/June of this year after we give our plants a chance to establish. Again, we don't want to be hasty and want this to be done right.
Just wanted to say hello officially and gauge if it's realistic to think a tortoise can thrive with the amount of plants listed above. I'll post again once the burrow is built and another post once we have our tortoise! We're very excited!