The RedFoot Tortoise

Helping educate current and potential owners of Redfoot tortoises on their husbandry, so they can have a healthy, active tortoise and the tortoise can express its normal behavior and live a long, healthy life.

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Redfoot Tortoise Husbandry – What Drives Success

March 26, 2016 by Ernie 1 Comment

Redfoot Tortoise Husbandry

This post on Redfoot Tortoise Husbandry is a part of the presentation I made to the Dallas, Fort Worth Hematological Society in March of 2016.

Over my 45 year fascination and maintenance of various tortoise species I discovered a few principles I’d like to share with you as they pertain to Redfoot Tortoise Husbandry.

As you can see by the graphic at the top of this post, the foundation of successful tortoise husbandry are the knowledge of the topography and the underlying geology of their native range.

That can be broken down into two simple principles:

  • Topography drives their enclosures
  • Geology drives their diet

Redfoot Tortoise Husbandry – Topography drives their enclosure

First, let’s take a look at the topography of the native region of the Redfoot Tortoise and how it drives the type of enclosure or pens aspect of Redfoot Tortoise Husbandry.

For the entire range of the Redfoot tortoise (Southern Central America and Northern South America), 70-90% of the topography is dense tropical forest. Only 20-30% is open savanna which gets abundant daily direct sunshine.

So, understanding that fact, why would so many people owning a Redfoot or Yellowfoot tortoise create a pen with little to no cover, which is more suited for a Russian or Greek? It certainty isn’t because they’ve done the basic research on this species.

Why would someone put an animal with a black, navy blue, or dark brown carapace in a pen with the purpose of maximum light exposure? Ya got me.

When you look at the world’s predominate forest tortoises you’ll notice the vast majority have a carapace color I mentioned in the previous sentence. Think Yellowfoot, Burmese Black and Brown Mountain Tortoises, think Forest Hingeback, think Redfoot.

Why is that?

It’s because dark colors absorb heat and this basic scientific fact, drives forest tortoises to spend their lives in an environment that minimizes direct sunlight.

Dense tropical forest on or near the equator also have a very low year round temperature range. 70 to 94 degrees is typical in many of these regions, so there’s no need for a forest tortoise to bask in direct sunlight to reach their normal operating temperature.

The ambient heat of the forest is sufficient to that purpose.

There are exceptions to every rule, such as, the Elongated and Travancore Tortoise from India and Asia, which both have a lighter colored carapace.

The reverse of this principle are arid species tortoises. Many of them (Egyptian, Golden Greek, etc.) have very light colored carapaces because they need to reflect the continuous heat from direct sunlight.

Redfoot Tortoise Husbandry – Geology drives their diet

Now, let’s see how the geologic underlayment of a region drives the tortoise’s diet.

Let’s start in the Mediterranean basin where all of European, North African, and Asia Steppe tortoises developed and survive today.

From a geologic perspective this region is simply a one large, continuous limestone bed and the principal component of limestone is calcium.

The correlation between the the native ranges of these tortoise species and the limestone pockets easily explains why they developed there and why they continue to survive there today.

Combine the high calcium availability in the vegetation in this region from the limestone and the need for this vegetation to have a thicker, more fibrous leaf structure due to the high daily temperatures and near continuous sunshine and . . . .

. . . you can see why every book published on arid species husbandry published over the last 40 years worth its price talks about their need for a high calcium, high fiber diet.

The importance of fiber and it’s bio-chemical purposes in arid species tortoises is a discussion for another day and I’ll address in detail in a Udemy course I’m creating on Russian Tortoise husbandry.

So, how does this geology play out in the equatorial areas forest tortoises and our friend the Redfoot tortoise play out?

Well, the geologic region where Redfoot and Yellowfoot tortoises reside is not a large, continuous limestone bed. If fact, there’s not much limestone in the underlayment and what’s there doesn’t express it self near the surface like the Mediterranean basin.

It’s this geologic difference from their arid species brethren that drove forest tortoises do derive a different strategy for calcium uptake (and acquire the Vitamin D needed for the uptake cascade) and fiber requirements.

That strategy revolved around those aspects of their forest environment where calcium, fiber, and Vitamin D could be found.

In a tropical forest, that means; fruit, mushrooms, carrion, and mammal feces.

All of these are good sources of calcium, fiber, and Vitamin D. (D2 in Mushrooms, D3 in carrion and mammal feces).

From a fruit perspective think papaya. Native to many parts of the Redfoot range and an excellent 2:1 calcium to phosphorus ratio. Lots of fiber in the rind as well.

High in beta carotene (Vitamin A precursor) which is a vitamin in most dark leafy greens (think arid species diet). Also, fruit trees have deeper roots than surface vegetation, so their roots can access the available limestone well below the surface.

Mushrooms are loaded with minerals and other micro-nutrients and one of those nutrients is Vitamin D2. Bio-chemically D2 works the same way as D3 for calcium uptake, just not as effectively.

Carrion and mammal feces are both significant sources of protein and calcium. Redfoots and Yellowfoots both need animal protein otherwise they suffer from neurological issues manifesting itself in locomotion problems.

By consuming these readily available food sources within the forest, Redfoot’s and Yellowfoot’s evolved a strategy that satisfied their calcium needs in the absence of calcium and fiber rich surface vegetation.

These significant topographical and geologic differences between the environments of the arid and forest tortoises species is why I recommend the following completely different diets.

Arid species:

  • 100% dark, leafy fiberous greens, chopped despined cactus pads, garden weeds, and dried timothy hay.

Forest species:

  • 60% fruit, 35% greens (includes mushrooms), 5% animal protein – supplemented with a calcium/D3 powder.

On a closing note, when the first Impressed Tortoises of southeast Asia (dense tropical forests) were brought into captivity all of them died within 6 months.

It wasn’t until one intrepid individual lucky enough to get one started feeding it mushrooms as the primary food with fruit as the secondary item that one survived longer than 6 months.

Today captive bred Impressed tortoises are available on occasion and that availability can be traced back to finally “discovering” the correct diet.

As you now know, discovering the correct Impressed tortoise diet shouldn’t have taken long when you understand the topography and geology of the region the animal comes from in the wild.

Filed Under: Redfoot Care Tagged With: Redfoot Tortoise, Redfoot Tortoise Husbandry

Re-purpose An Old Pen To a new Indoor Redfoot Tortoise Enclosure

October 13, 2015 by Ernie Leave a Comment

New Indoor Redfoot Tortoise Enclosure

Now that we’ve moved to the Dallas metroplex from Minneapolis, we need to create an indoor pen for our sub-adult Redfoot tortoises.

I’m using a 3 foot by 8 foot wood pen I had been using for one of my male Russians, who’s now in with another male and costing nicely, for my small sub-adult Redfoot herd.

First, my wife and I used an old dark brown tarp and fit and cut it to size for the inside of the pen. This will keep moisture levels higher at tortoise level, which is important for Redfoot’s since they’re tropical forest animals. We’ve used duct tape to adhere it to the top of the pen.

For the substrate I’ve used my combo of choice, a 50/50 mix pf topsoil and expanded, damp coconut fiber. This we top with 1-2 inches of finely milled cypress mulch.

The beauty of this substrate is it retains moisture very well, but with the cypress mulch topping keeps the tortoises from getting any level of shell rot on their plastron’s if the topsoil/coconut fiber gets too wet from my adding water to it.

I use a 3-4 inch depth of substrate because over time it compacts down to 2=3 inches even with my added weekly water.

Next we add plastic plants to one third of the pen to give them places to hide and simulate the forest floor where at this age they spend 100% of their time. To the next third we add the heat emitter and light to provide constant heat and dim light to simulate the light inside a tropical forest.

A 100 watt heat emitter keeps the pen at a 70-85 degree temperature gradient across the pen. The light I’m using is a 13 watt UVB bulb. It’s the only bulb I had at home and I wanted as low a wattage as possible because I don’t want a bulb to produce heat.

UVB bulbs aren’t required for Redfoot’s as long as you feed them a small amount of animal protein (low fat cat food for example) mixed with a liberal amount of pure calcium carbonate every 10 days or so.

I’m using Plexiglas we brought with us to Texas to cover the pen top in order to hold in the heat and moisture. It’s not the best looking setup, but it works for now. 🙂

We mist down the pen every other day to ensure the humidity stays at 60-80%.

So there you have it, a way to re-purpose a pen used for an arid species to one for a forest species.

Filed Under: Redfoot Care Tagged With: Redfoot Tortoise, Redfoot Tortoise indoor enclosure, Redfoot Tortoise indoor pen

A Cheap, Easy Outdoor Redfoot Tortoise Pen

July 20, 2015 by Ernie 1 Comment

A Cheap, Easy Outdoor Redfoot Tortoise Pen

If setting up a short-term outdoor pen for your Redfoot Tortoises is a problem, here’s another quick idea for you.

It’s a plastic baby pool anyone over the age of 40 will remember from childhood. Anyway, it’s nice a round and easy to fill with my substrate, the 50/50 topsoil, coconut fiber mix, and covered with an inch or two of cypress mulch.

There’s some moss, a hide, and plastic plant so your Redfoot’s can dig in and hide when they get too warm or to feel safe.

I have it temporarily covered with our old puppy fence, but a mosquito or bird netting will work much better and a small role of either one is cheap. You want to make sure no predator can get in while your Redfoot tortoises are outside.

This isn’t meant to be one they can live in outside 24/7 it isn’t secure enough, but more of a 4-6 hour time outside.

You can put this setup together for $35-40 total cost, so if you’re looking for a quick and easy outdoor pen for your Redfoot Tortoises, here’s another idea to consider.

Filed Under: Redfoot Care Tagged With: Outdoor Redfoot Tortoise pen, Redfoot Tortoise pen

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