Saved a Tortoise

[onionman]

Hello to all of you!
I ended up saving a African spurred Tortoise on July 4th. :) Someone had left him in a plastic mail bin beside some drop-off boxes near the place I work at.
With a note attached leading me to believe that a domestic spat brought this animal cruelty. :(
At first I thought he was just a local box turtle, but nothing matched his type. :confused:
Everyone at work started calling him Spike and it sounded cool to me, so that is who he is now! ;)
They are the third largest species of tortoise on earth. :eek:
We plan on keeping him depending on where we end up moving to this summer.
Here are some pictures of him with my daughter Daytona and one of our cats Ashez.
http://onionman.myphotoalbum.com/view_album.php?set_albumName=album05

I do plan on entering him in "the Pet of the Day" soon. :cool:

[Karen]

Wow, congratulations on rescuing him! And now your daughter will be a tortoise-friend for life, too, I bet! Welcome to Pet Talk!

[Alysser]

Thanks for saving him!! He's gorgeous. I am sure that handsome guy will not have a problem being picked as POTD.

[BitsyNaceyDog]

Welcome to Pet Talk!
Sulcata are great tortoises, you'll enjoy him. I have 3 sulcatas. They do get really big and they need a lot of room- like you said they are the third largest tortoise in the world. Sulcata Station (http://www.sulcata-station.org/) is a great site with a lot of great information.

The pyramiding of your sulcatas shell is from an improper diet. His former owner probably either fed him fresh fruits and veggies or a commercial tortoise diet- both are extremely bad diets for a sulcata. A sulcata should be fed a diet of mostly grasses and hay. Our sulcatas graze on fresh grass in our yard. We also give them this (http://www.oxbowhay.com/Shop/showProduct.sp?PRODUCT_NO=80) hay mixture from Oxbow. ectotherm.com (http://www.ectotherm.com/tlproducts.htm#clever%20cactus) has great treats and prickly pear cactus which they can have too. A calcium supplement is also VERY important.

When the weather is warm our tortoises sped a lot of time outside. Their outdoor enclosure has a section of it covered for shade. The rest of the enclosure has welding wire over it to keep out any unwanted visitors. We use a flower pot saucer for a water bowl and we keep that in the shaded part.

You can build a tortoise table for him when he's inside. You can find plans on how to build a tortoise table if you do a search on Google. For a substrate we use Bed-A-Beast (http://www.petsmart.com/global/product_detail.jsp?PRODUCT%3C%3Eprd_id=84552444177 5609&FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=2534374302030075&ASSORTMENT%3C%3East_id=2534374302023694&bmUID=1185900310123&itemNo=0&Ntt=Bed+a+Beast&In=All&previousText=Bed+a+Beast&N=2) mixes with organic top soil that we got at Lowes. They like to dig so it should be pretty deep. One of mine has dug a burrow that he goes into to sleep. When they're inside they need a UVA/UVB light and a heat lamp as well.