Training a sulcata..

[Walkers]

My 2 sullies sleep outside at night and I'm trying to train them to go in their heated night box. I have to physically put them in the box every night for about 3 months now. Anybody have a technique out there to speed up the process? Thank you

 

[mike taylor]

Nope, you're doing what we all do . You can try and use food to get them to walk in . But it's to cold for that! Ain't nobody got time for that! Haha

 

[Walkers]

Haha thanks Mike. I'll just keep plugging away till they catch on.

 

[Tom]

The first thing to realize is that having them live as a pair could be an impediment to what you are trying to accomplish. If they are old enough to live outside, they are old enough to realize they shouldn't be in another tortoise's territory. At some point you are going to need to separate them. Better to do it sooner rather than later.

Two techniques:
1. Where do they park at night now? If you move the box to that spot, they might start going in it all on their own even as early as tonight.
2. Pay attention to when they "park" each night in their enclosure. At some point they retire from the daily activities and just park somewhere for the night. During this cool winter weather most of mine have been turning in around 3 or 3:30 every after noon. Get some cinder blocks and build a 5-6' circle around the entrance to your tortoise box at this time each afternoon and plop them in this circle. Since there is nowhere else to go, and no cover or corners, they should hopefully just walk on into the box. After a couple of weeks of them patterning to walk into the box every evening, they will usually begin to seek it out on their own every afternoon. Sometimes they have to be put half way into the box and then just don't let them back up. It may take some patience.

Pics of the box and enclosure might help give us some more insight too.

 

[leigti]

If there are two tortoises then can you make two boxes? this might help a little bit with the territory issues, at least at night.