I couple of people have asked me about my sully girls, and where they went.
I do not have them any longer. To be 100% honest, I never wanted to keep sulcatas. My entire motivation in getting Gwen and Ella was the condition they were being kept in.
Their previous owners had a built a pen for them that was actually nicely sized for an indoor enclosure, but they were kept on pure sand, their heat lamps were too far off the floor to provide the right amount of heat and their main diet was iceburg lettuce. The day I went to pic them up, they were ice cold with weepy eyes. They had no water dish available in their enclosure, and were expected to get their water from the food they ate.
I soaked them for 20 minutes each to warm them and hydrate them. They both produced an ENORMOUS amount of urates, and drank and drank and drank. Gwen, the smaller of the two, was so light weight she felt hollow.
I started feeding them some canned pumpkin, and for about 4 days, they pooped out nothing but the sand they had ingested. I fed them some good, wetted timothy hay, and they ate and ate and ate.
They were with me for some months and their health steadily improved. I don't have a home or yard to properly accommodate an adult sully. I started looking for a new home for them, and after several months of searching, I found a young man in a town several hours from me. He was willing to listen to all my care advice, asked questions on his own, and had the space to provide them with an entire indoor room in the winter months. His yard was already securely fenced and he was reinforcing it even more. So, as much as it scared me to let them go, I felt that I had found them a good home, and he adopted them.
I have stayed in touch with him and they seem to be doing very well.
Russians and Egyptians are the two species of tortoises that I have always loved most, but never had. This year when I got my income tax return, I bought my four adorable little Russians, and increased my Hingeback group. I adopted my Hingebacks from a member here, he had them for some time and I have had them for over a year now. The one Hingeback that I purchased a month or so ago is very little, I would say about 2 1/2 years old. It will be awhile until she can breed. I have put a deposit down on two more adult females, which will bring my group to 2.4 and I can breed the other two big girls in six months or so if everything goes right. I believe Maude is gravid again, she is eating like a pig and is HEAVY, almost twice as heavy as the males. Homer certainly paid attention to her, lol.
Hopefully in the next year or so, I will be able to start working on a group of Egyptians. Unless I find some other heavily imported wild caught species that I decide I am going to single-handedly "save," lol. But seriously, I want to produce hatchlings of the Russians and Hingebacks and sell them for the same prices as WC. I am only one person, but if my hingebacks produce 4 babies a year, that is 4 hingebacks that might get to stay in Africa.
Kristina
I do not have them any longer. To be 100% honest, I never wanted to keep sulcatas. My entire motivation in getting Gwen and Ella was the condition they were being kept in.
Their previous owners had a built a pen for them that was actually nicely sized for an indoor enclosure, but they were kept on pure sand, their heat lamps were too far off the floor to provide the right amount of heat and their main diet was iceburg lettuce. The day I went to pic them up, they were ice cold with weepy eyes. They had no water dish available in their enclosure, and were expected to get their water from the food they ate.
I soaked them for 20 minutes each to warm them and hydrate them. They both produced an ENORMOUS amount of urates, and drank and drank and drank. Gwen, the smaller of the two, was so light weight she felt hollow.
I started feeding them some canned pumpkin, and for about 4 days, they pooped out nothing but the sand they had ingested. I fed them some good, wetted timothy hay, and they ate and ate and ate.
They were with me for some months and their health steadily improved. I don't have a home or yard to properly accommodate an adult sully. I started looking for a new home for them, and after several months of searching, I found a young man in a town several hours from me. He was willing to listen to all my care advice, asked questions on his own, and had the space to provide them with an entire indoor room in the winter months. His yard was already securely fenced and he was reinforcing it even more. So, as much as it scared me to let them go, I felt that I had found them a good home, and he adopted them.
I have stayed in touch with him and they seem to be doing very well.
Russians and Egyptians are the two species of tortoises that I have always loved most, but never had. This year when I got my income tax return, I bought my four adorable little Russians, and increased my Hingeback group. I adopted my Hingebacks from a member here, he had them for some time and I have had them for over a year now. The one Hingeback that I purchased a month or so ago is very little, I would say about 2 1/2 years old. It will be awhile until she can breed. I have put a deposit down on two more adult females, which will bring my group to 2.4 and I can breed the other two big girls in six months or so if everything goes right. I believe Maude is gravid again, she is eating like a pig and is HEAVY, almost twice as heavy as the males. Homer certainly paid attention to her, lol.
Hopefully in the next year or so, I will be able to start working on a group of Egyptians. Unless I find some other heavily imported wild caught species that I decide I am going to single-handedly "save," lol. But seriously, I want to produce hatchlings of the Russians and Hingebacks and sell them for the same prices as WC. I am only one person, but if my hingebacks produce 4 babies a year, that is 4 hingebacks that might get to stay in Africa.
Kristina
