Tortoise table question (new here!)
Posted: 21 Jun 2020, 19:22
Hey!
This is my first post on the forum, and I'm so grateful to have found this site. The information on the site and forum is so helpful - and I've been loving identifying weeds and realising how much FOOD already exists in my garden. So thanks!
I've been doing my research for a couple of months as my partner and I are soon to be adopting a baby western Hermann's tortoise (we're picking him/her up this week - I'll call it a her for now!). She's only 7cm at the moment, and has always lived indoors, so I've built a 5x2ft wooden tortoise table to start her off and have been planning to keep her inside initially.
But we live in south west France, where I understand this species is native (although certainly rare in the wild now), so today it's suddenly dawned on me that maybe she'd benefit from being out in her natural climate sooner rather than later. The weather at the moment is hot and sunny some days, stormy on others, with daytime temps of between 25-30C and nighttime temps of between 11-16C. It'll probably be like this for a couple more weeks and then the hotter summer days and nights will take over.
I won't build an outdoor enclosure just yet as I want to get the soil and planting right, and make some underground adjustments so she can't burrow out - but we do have a courtyard and a sunny balcony, which has a roof so it's sheltered from rain. So now I'm thinking maybe the tortoise table would be better going on the balcony rather than indoors, so she can have the natural sunlight instead of a lamp - and I can make a secure mesh lid for it tomorrow.
But would she be too cold at night if she's always been indoors? And if so, if I make a miniature cold frame that fits inside the tortoise table, would that solve it? The table I've made is pretty heavy as I used solid wood I had lying around already, rather than nice lightweight ply...so once it's got substrate in it too, it'll be too heavy to move in/out every day so needs to be in one place.
Thanks in advance!
This is my first post on the forum, and I'm so grateful to have found this site. The information on the site and forum is so helpful - and I've been loving identifying weeds and realising how much FOOD already exists in my garden. So thanks!
I've been doing my research for a couple of months as my partner and I are soon to be adopting a baby western Hermann's tortoise (we're picking him/her up this week - I'll call it a her for now!). She's only 7cm at the moment, and has always lived indoors, so I've built a 5x2ft wooden tortoise table to start her off and have been planning to keep her inside initially.
But we live in south west France, where I understand this species is native (although certainly rare in the wild now), so today it's suddenly dawned on me that maybe she'd benefit from being out in her natural climate sooner rather than later. The weather at the moment is hot and sunny some days, stormy on others, with daytime temps of between 25-30C and nighttime temps of between 11-16C. It'll probably be like this for a couple more weeks and then the hotter summer days and nights will take over.
I won't build an outdoor enclosure just yet as I want to get the soil and planting right, and make some underground adjustments so she can't burrow out - but we do have a courtyard and a sunny balcony, which has a roof so it's sheltered from rain. So now I'm thinking maybe the tortoise table would be better going on the balcony rather than indoors, so she can have the natural sunlight instead of a lamp - and I can make a secure mesh lid for it tomorrow.
But would she be too cold at night if she's always been indoors? And if so, if I make a miniature cold frame that fits inside the tortoise table, would that solve it? The table I've made is pretty heavy as I used solid wood I had lying around already, rather than nice lightweight ply...so once it's got substrate in it too, it'll be too heavy to move in/out every day so needs to be in one place.
Thanks in advance!