Forum Babia Gora

hi, i have just inherited a six year old leopard tortoise, i have made him a tort table from an old bookcase upended and screwed to a large set of drawers. I think i have his enviroment correct but im confused about his food. i want to feed a natural diet and have tried to research the right weeds but the sites ive been on are offering conflicting advice on the same sort of weeds.At the moment all he is eating is dandelion leaves and some grass.Should he be having more variety and if so what. any useful tips or hints to keep him healthy and happy would be apprieated..
thanks clare

I want me a TFO shirt. Where do I get them?

My dream for a long time was to be close enough to an elephant to ride it and to look into it’s eyes close and to touch it and feel it’s trunk. I wanted it to smell me and relate to me somehow. I wanted to get to know an elephant. So here they are…2 big full grown elephants and this is their greeting. They obviously were welcoming us and wanted to commune with us…

Look at them reaching out to touch us…

They were so wild yet so tame. Being that close to them was a thrill for me. They smelled like Sulcata and they felt so wild. I can’t put into words how I felt standing there next to them. All the sudden I wasn’t as sick anymore and here it is, it actually happened…an elephant was smelling my face and sniffing me all over. There is just one problem…I always thought an elephants truck was dry, but it’s not, it’s full of green and yellow snot so here am I getting elephant snot all over my face…

Awesome, what a feeling! It was every thing I wanted and more (the snot), hahaha. I actually didn’t want the snot, but that part was alright with me. An elephants skin is more like leather then you can imagine, tough and rough with tiny wires growing out all over…it was too cool for words!!!


I couldn’t hear all the commands, but this was probably “Trunks up”…

She wanted my camera…

This was another command I couldn’t hear, but they both opened their ears and held them that way for a bit…

When I looked into the Rhino’s eyes there wasn’t much there, but an elephant is very intelligent and you can see that and feel how they are. I looked into the eyes of one and she looked back at me. She looked into my eyes and she held really still while we got to know each other. It was a glorious experience. Seeing all the other animals was a thrill but meeting the elephants was the experience of a lifetime. I feel such gratitude to Tom for giving me this experience. It’s something not everyone gets to have. So, thank you so much Tom, even sick I enjoyed the hell out of it. I appreciate you taking so much time out of your day to do that for me, you will never know how much I loved it all and how much meeting the elephants meant to me. I am extremely grateful to you.

This is my new RF hatchling enclosure. It’s not done yet. I still have a sedum plant I want to stick in a corner, and a hardy hibiscus I’m going to grow right next to it (if it lives, haha).

I have squash seeds, clover, and violets growing there now, all very small baby plants as of yet. The purslane and strawberries seem to be determined to die. Sigh.

So I’ve undertaken the task of building my first and only tort table. It is 4×8 and all wood. I need to seal it/waterproof/mold/mildew proof the whole thing. Should I use polyurathane (sp?) on the whole thing? My whole goal is to use the wood we have around the place and not buy too much on the building of it. Sort of a challenge. I have managed to make the whole thing with recycled wood except for one plywood sheet I bought. I heard of the whole shower curtain liner trick too. I don’t want to have to buy linoleum if I don’t have to….recommendations?
At that size, I hope to make some sort of soil/peat moss/mulch mix for substrate and buy big bags at Lowes–any specific rec’s on that?
I want to have very happy torts this winter!
Mary

does any one out here have two males that are always trying to mate with each other?

Can a tortoise really absorb water through its skin and is this the main reason why people soak their torts? Can water be absorbed through the shell also?

quick question, and sorry if its been asked before but im in a bit of a rush… can my hermanns tort eat grape vine leaves? his main food is watercress, but im not able to get any over the weekend, and we have a LOT of grape vines growing in our garden… they are, er… eddible grapes, thats all i know. please let me know. cheers x

Apparently, not all tortoises at World Wildlife Zoo are in as good a shape as those that appeared in the “oldest” thread a couple weeks back…can’t download this one so follow the link…

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lilbtch/530…otostream/

Hey everyone I hadn’t been super active on this forum been busy school/work pets. But luckily I had posted some pics a while back of my tortoises and they actually laid eggs on June 16 of this year and as of 2 days ago they began to hatch!!! I had them incubating in a hovabator I constantly kept an eye on humidity temp everything so I’d like to share some pics and get some advice on when to take out the hatchlings I’m actually going to buy a new tank to put them in since as of today it’s 3 new babies

The day they laid the eggs

Extracting them

And here’s the first baby