winter slow down?

[Jill Gatwood]

My Russian tortoise habitat is the same temperature - with powersun light at one end around 95F and the cool side about 75F - as it is all year long. But for the last month or so, since it's gotten cold outside, my tortoise wants to stay in his hide all the time. I take him out to soak him a couple of times a week and he's active and eats readily. But then right back to the hide. I haven't seen him come out of his own accord at all.

I seem to remember a tortoise I had a long time ago doing this, too. Do they sense when it's winter and slow down because normally they would hibernate at this time?

 

[GBtortoises]

Some people believe so. But in most cases tortoises "slow down" because of one or more of the three critical activity triggers missing or being diminished. Temperature, light duration and light intensity are all required to be at normal activity levels for a tortoise to remain active. In almost all cases the correct light intensity is missing. The "all purpose" Mercury Vapor UVB lights work very well for providing UVB and basking heat. But they do not provide enough light intensity throughout the enclosure. Along with additional lighting a duration of 14-16 hours a day needs to be maintained as well as normal activity temperatures. A basking temperature of 95-110 under directly under the basking light is good. This will also raise the temperature at one end of the enclosure higher than the end farthest from the light which should be 72-80 degrees during the daytime. The night time temperatures should be approximately 15-20 degrees lower than the daytime temperatures for normal activity. 60-65 is good, even a little cooler is fine too. Along with active level temperatures, light duration and intensity a medium level humidity of about 45-60% should be maintained. Around 50% is ideal.

 

[JoeImhof]

The night time temperatures should be approximately 15-20 degrees lower than the daytime temperatures for normal activity.

This 15-20 degree differential, is that measured in the warm basking area? Thats of course easy to do.

Much harder indoors to get the cool side to be 15-20 cooler at night...... but mine stay almost exclusively in the "warm" areas in the daytime anyhow