Euclid
New Member
Hi folks,
I bought a house that has a backyard occupied with desert tortoises. They tend to mill around and burrow on the outside of the yard where there are flower beds and exposed soil and away from the middle of the grassy area. A couple of things - 1) I have dogs. They are very active and sometimes they dig about the flower beds. They are bad dogs in that sense but not directly aggressive to the tortoises. One likes to lick them on the shell though. The dogs generally ignore the tortoises. However they are curious animals so they root around bushes and stuff. Due to reasons the dogs are more or less a finished product and are untrainable to not make the backyard a catastrophe. How much will this stress the tortoises?
2) Also, I live in the american southwest, but in the elevated area (Albuquerque) so we do experience a winter (think of ABQ as a warmer Denver). Now these tortoises have been living here for quite a while, but is there anything I can do to make their winters a bit nicer? I was considering constructing a small habitat (like 8'x8' area). I can go further into my initial design of the habitat if anyone thinks this is worthwhile. I also wanted to construct a sort of a warming rock, possible incorporated with the habitat. Probably solar powered. Not really sure which way to go here, but are there any do-it-yourselfers that have build such things?
Thank you for the help!
I bought a house that has a backyard occupied with desert tortoises. They tend to mill around and burrow on the outside of the yard where there are flower beds and exposed soil and away from the middle of the grassy area. A couple of things - 1) I have dogs. They are very active and sometimes they dig about the flower beds. They are bad dogs in that sense but not directly aggressive to the tortoises. One likes to lick them on the shell though. The dogs generally ignore the tortoises. However they are curious animals so they root around bushes and stuff. Due to reasons the dogs are more or less a finished product and are untrainable to not make the backyard a catastrophe. How much will this stress the tortoises?
2) Also, I live in the american southwest, but in the elevated area (Albuquerque) so we do experience a winter (think of ABQ as a warmer Denver). Now these tortoises have been living here for quite a while, but is there anything I can do to make their winters a bit nicer? I was considering constructing a small habitat (like 8'x8' area). I can go further into my initial design of the habitat if anyone thinks this is worthwhile. I also wanted to construct a sort of a warming rock, possible incorporated with the habitat. Probably solar powered. Not really sure which way to go here, but are there any do-it-yourselfers that have build such things?
Thank you for the help!