my little baby sulcata can’t decide if she’s hungry or not!

{The African Spurred Tortoise, also called the African Spur Thigh Tortoise, most commonly called Sulcata tortoise, is a species of tortoise which inhabits the southern edge of the Sahara desert, in northern Africa. | Their diet provides them with most of their water requirements, but they do drink. | They coat their skin with mud when available to cool off. | When mud wallows are not available, they retreat to cooler burrows. | Spurred tortoises are important to deserts because their burrows provide shelter for other animals. | They do not hibernate, unlike many other types of tortoises, due to their natural environment being so close to the equator, and therefore temperate throughout the year. | Though they are known to hibernate in climates colder than their natural habitat. | They love to dig, and make very long burrows, often much damper than the ground surface, which other species frequently sublet, making dens in alcoves off the main burrow. | Due to the availability of these animals in the pet trade, and due to their reputation for having a pleasant temperament, more and more sulcata tortoises are brought home as pets, in fact they are officially the second most common pet tortoise after the Mediterranean Spur-Thighed. | However, these animals provide significant challenges to their keepers, due to their dietary and temperature requirements, and their size. | For one thing they make quite effective battering rams at 100 lb or more. | They are very powerful and very persistent if they think you have something tasty in your house or on the other side of the fence. | A captive diet for Geochelone sulcata should be organized around five important factors: high dietary fiber, low protein, low fruit or sugary foods, adequate calcium, and not overfeeding. | In much of the United States, their temperature requirements are of greater concern to their keepers. | Given their large size, sulcatas are most easily kept out of doors, but should not overnight outside when the temperatures drop below 60 degrees Fahrenheit. | As this describes most of the US, especially during winter, prospective sulcata keepers may find housing them to be impossible after their first few years of age. | Coming as they do from the southern Sahara, Geochelone sulcata is well adapted to hot, dry climates. | They derive most of their moisture from their diet, and they regulate their temperature and humidity needs by retreating into burrows. | Most sulcatas, especially hatchlings, spend much of their time in these burrows, and the humidity requirements for hide boxes in captivity are higher than might be expected – around 40-60%. | In other words, no special care needs to be taken to ensure their areas are dry enough – in reality, care must be taken to humidify their enclosures, as hatchlings especially are prone to dehydration. | The Sulcata is the third largest species of tortoise in the world, and is the largest of the mainland tortoises. | Adults are usually 18 inches in shell length, and weigh 70 to 100 pounds. | Specimens with 24 to 36 inch long shells weighing 150 pounds are not unknown. | They grow from hatchling size (2-3 inches) very quickly, reaching 6-10 inches within the first few years of their lives. | An adult sulcata will need a great deal of space. | The oldest known of this species was 56 years old although it is believed they can live up to about 80 years. | The sulcatas native habitats are semi-arid, and the plants available to this terrestrial herbivore are primarily dry grasses and weeds. | Grasses should make up at least 75% of a captive sulcatas diet, to provide the high dietary fiber found in the wild. | Protein is lacking in their natural diet. | A captive diet with a high protein content will quickly overpower the tortoises renal system, as unused amino acids in the bloodstream are strained out and deposited in the kidneys. | A misconception exists that high protein causes pyramiding, it instead causes increased growth rates. | Environmental humidity instead has the greatest effect on pyramidal growth. | Sulcatas kept in high temperatures combined with high humidity have virtually no pyramiding. | Lack of calcium and high protein do contribute to some of the shell malformations and defects. | Fruit, and other sugary foods not present in their natural diet can be harmful to the tortoises if they change the pH balance of the sulcatas gut. | If the pH changes kill off their intestinal flora, they can be subject to toxic shock, which can be fatal. | Young sulcatas grow very fast – they can easily double in size each year during the first three years. | For proper bone and shell development, their diet must include adequate calcium. | In the wild, this is provided by a high calcium content in the soil, and therefore in their diet, but in captivity calcium supplementation is required. | Last, the diet that is available to captive sulcatas can be much more nutritious than in the wild, which offers its own challenges. | Sulcatas are naturally voracious, to offset the dearth of nutrients in their habitat; care must be taken to insure the tortoise does not overfeed. | Bedding, or other plant material in their enclosures, should be restricted to grasses or grass-based hay, to ensure that the animal does not take in too much nutrition. | They require high fiber diets and many vegetables can cause health problems in large quantities. | When they are small you can feed them collar but they will only eat it if you smash it. | Red leaf lettuce, cucumbers, hay and dandelions are some of the better foods to make up the bulk of their diet. | They will attempt to eat most types of plants eventually and some common garden plants can be very toxic to them, such as azaleas. | They will eat such things as caterpillars and snails if given the opportunity, but this also should be a very small portion of their diet. | Sulcatas need a large enclosure as they get bigger and should be given a generous grazing area. | Sulcatas should be kept above 60F, which means most areas will require special winter accommodations. | Unfortunately many people do not research them properly and purchase them without an understanding of the responsibility they are taking on. | This is compounded by the relatively low price for a large exotic tortoise. | Per CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora), a zero annual export quota has been established for Geochelone sulcata for specimens removed from the wild and traded for primarily commercial purposes. |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||}