Urgent! Identification and help!

[Sophy]

Hello everyone!

My name is Sofia and I live in Egypt. A tortoise was given to me yesterday and I need help with identification of species and gender (and maybe age?), as well as how to care for him/her in the best way. And with this I mean that I want to know everything from what to feed him/her to the most basic stuff, since I'm completely fresh to this and I really want the best for him/her because I fell in love immediately.



Do you have any tips of good pages I can read about this?

To me he/she looks a bit dry, am I supposed to give him/her a bath? Also he/she didn't drink or eat anything yet. :/

I would really appreciate if someone took a look and told me what they know, thank you!


One more thing, as you can see on this picture above, his/her tail is always to this side and it's very hard to move, I actually think it makes him pain... is this normal?

Thanks for any help!

 

[juli11]

Hi,

Welcome to the forum! Why do you get this tortoise? It hears like a "surprise"?
So you say you live in Egypt..
In Egypt there live testudo kleinmanni. But yours isn't 100% a kleinmanni. At the hole North African coast live 3 subspecies of testudo gracea.
T. Gracea gracea T. Gracea nabulensis and T. Gracea marrokensis. Normally only testudo gracea gracea live in Egypt but the population of the 3 species are mixed every where. So you can find all these 3 species every where. Also the species are mixed among each other. So what I want to say :-D is that it very difficult to identify the subspecies of the North African coast. Because you often have bastards. But I think you've got a gracea gracea. And I think it is a female.

---

Sorry I mean male :-D and maybe he is between 15 and 30 years old.

 

[FLINTUS]

It would most likely be a graeca graeca judging by your area. However, I'm tempted to say Morrocan due to the colouring.

 

[Yvonne G]

You can trust the information on the Tortoise Trust's web site. Here's a link to basic care for a Greek tortoise:

http://www.tortoisetrust.org/articles/Basicmedcare.htm

 

[RGB]

My vote would be for a male...

 

[Jlant85]

Agreed male!

 

[Sophy]

Thank you everyone! Your help has been much appreciated.

He drinks now, which is great but he still doesn't eat too much. I also put him in a big plate with shallow water which he loves, and now he is much less dry and seem more active. He also made a pee and poo! Exciting.

He was given to me as a surprise, yes. My friend's daughter owns him but she left Egypt to go to Italy, and they didn't know anything about him.

I have one more question. His nose has like lime/green/yellow jelly inside, at least it looks like it. I saw it in this macro photo below. Is this normal?

Thank you!

 

[juli11]

No that's not normal... It looks like a slimy nose. It the nose runny? Or is the smile only in the nose?

 

[Sophy]

I never saw it drop from the nose or anything like this, only like this in the nose. What should I do?