A warm, dry, well fed tortoise is a happy tortoise.
In a nutshell, that’s it. It doesn’t have to be much more complicated than that. You can spend a little time – or a lot of time. Same with money – you can make it expensive or inexpensive and still have a healthy, thriving tortoise. There are two things you have to know about Sulcata tortoises.
ONE: They are rugged and easy to keep – they tolerate quite a few mistakes by their keepers and once you recognize and correct the mistake, they bounce back better than most..
TWO: Like all reptiles, they are stoic – that is to say that they show few or even no signs of illness or weakness until they are SO sick that they most likely will die. If and when a reptile does get sick, its owners are often shocked at how fast it goes down hill. This is because their little reptile has been sick for weeks or even months and just didn’t show any symptoms.
What This All Means is that it’s much easier and much better to provide healthy conditions in the first place than to try to heal a sick tortoise.
A baby sulcata will be happy in a 5 to 10 gallon aquarium, a Tupperware container of the same footprint – anything that gives them enough room to move around and to move from warmer to cooler regions will be fine. A mesh-screen top may be needed if dogs or cats are in the house. "Mesh-Screen" means like poutry netting (chicken wire) or Hardware cloth, not actual window screen. Some mondern window screens actually filter out as much as 65% of the UV we are actually seeking.
I use cheap indoor-outdoor carpeting to line the bottom of their cage – it looks nice and it’s easy to wash – I keep extra pieces on hand so when it’s time, I can just swap one out for another. Newspaper is good too. They sell a green carpet that looks just like grass, but this is the ONE solid substrate that you shouldn’t use because your small tortoise will think it IS grass and try to eat it. Actual sand is ok, so is dirt – but potting soils, mulch, barks, etc. are expensive to set up and harder to clean than you’d think. Rabbit pellets and other ‘bedding matter’ CAN be used, but it’s better if you don’t have anything for your flooring that could be ingested. Plastic plants make it look nice (for you) as long as the leaves are high enough that he doesn’t try to eat them. A small, upside down plastic pot with a hole cut into it (to make a little cave) is a nice touch, too. It’s called ‘visual privacy’ and all animals seem to appreciate it. However, these things are not necessary, either – it’s about your individual taste.
A baby sulcata will be happy if the temperature ranges from 85 in the warm part of the tank during the day to 65 or so at night. I usually suspend a small (25 watt bulb) over one corner of the enclosure about 18 to 24 inches above the floor and attach it to a simple timer (ordinary bulb, clamp-lamp holder and timer are all inexpensive and available at Home Depot or Lowes). If you have a thermometer you can place under the bulb while setting up your tank, you should try to see 80 – 85 degrees directly under the light after 10 minutes and less (normal room temperature) at the other end of the tank or enclosure. If you don’t have a thermometer, place your hand on the floor below the bulb and leave it there for a few minutes. If your hand feels uncomfortably warm …. move the light higher. Remember: All we’re trying to do is make a place that is a ‘bit’ warmer than the regular room temperature. The most important thing is that you provide a temperature gradient – from lower to warmer – and allow your tortoise to choose his own temperature. Some like warmer and some like cooler, but whatever yours likes best, he should migrate between the two at least sometimes. If he won’t go near the light (or won’t leave it) that’s an indication that your two temperatures aren’t quite right.
A baby sulcata needs direct sunlight and it can’t be filtered through glass. Aquariums or even window glass filter out the UV radiation. The expensive way to solve this is with a UVA/UVB light from a pet store – but the easy and cheap way is to take the baby sulcata outside a couple times a week. A 10 minute walk in the back yard (while you watch – don’t even leave to answer the phone!) twice a week is a great way. Alternately, unclip his lamp and take his home outside for a half hour. MAKE SURE that you cover at least 70% of the top in a manner to provide shade from the direct sunlight. This is in addition to whatever screened top may be needed to keep curious dogs or cats away.
Ten Minutes of direct sunlight: It is important to remember here that at such a small body size, your tortoise can overheat VERY quickly. Warm is good – HOT is not.
A baby sulcata needs a little soaking once in a while. Sulcata’s come from areas of the world that get very little rainfall. Some sulcata can go a year without ever seeing actual water. To combat this, Nature has made them VERY efficient in conserving water. They get water from their food and they extract and save so much of that water that their urine comes out as a dry white powder or maybe a white paste. We soak them only because it helps stimulate their digestive system. Place the tortoise in a shallow tray of water, barely luke warm, just to the top of their lower shell (no higher than their chin) and let them soak/drink for about 5 minutes. As your tortoise grows, you can vary the time and frequency of the soaking by their urine – if it’s a messy, watery white paste, restrict the water. If it looks firm or even powdery – then just right.
A baby sulcata needs dark greens to eat. Just like scarce water, sulcata live in deserts that do not provide very much food. For this reason, sulcata are “programmed” to eat everything, always, and never stop until they can’t hold another bite. In other words, Nature tells them to eat all they can - every chance they can, because they never know when food will come along again! But this is a problem, too, because over eating can lead to health problems.
THIS IS IMPORTANT TO REMEMBER: They come from a land where food is scarce
and they can go days or even weeks without finding food. If you feed them
all they can eat, they will grow fast but they will grow irregularly.
When the shell grows too fast, the scutes will grow more quickly that the
rest of the body and the result is what is called pyramiding.
Contrary to many opinions this is not a problem with hydraton or the kind
of diet - but simply too much food.
Dark greens are good: Collards, Mustard and Turnip greens along with green beans and squash. Kale and Spinach remove calcium from their bodies, so they should be used sparingly. If you feed your baby sulcata all he can eat in 5-8 minutes and you do this 3 times a week, he’ll grow nice and slowly and live for 120 years! If you see the centers of his scutes (the plates that make up his shell) start to grow outward, like a pyramid – that’s a sign of getting fat and it’s time to cut back on his food.
A baby sulcata can use a vitamin supplement now and again. One ¼ of a ground up Pet Tab vitamin (cheap, high quality and available everywhere) in his food once a week isn’t a bad idea. Powdered calcium sprinkled on his food once every other week can’t hurt – but don’t obsess over these things, either.
There are many sites on the Internet with care sheets for Geochelone sulcata (the African Spur Thigh Tortoise) and most have valid information. But most also worry too much.