I’m glad you’re tortoise is doing well. Do you know what kind it is?

I have to warn you to be careful about collecting wild turtles and tortoises, it isn’t legal, and you could end up with a fine. Most wild ones are VERY endangered, and are protected.

You will also have to be careful for this reason, if you have to take him to the vet, sell him, or travel across a border.

It is also not legal to return a captive turtle or tortoise to the wild, as this can spread disease, and it is illegal to pick up a creature and let it go in another area for the same reason.

In the future, please buy pets from reputable dealers rather than collecting wild ones.

That said, good luck and take good care of her. Find out what species it is for sure, and learn exactly what she needs to stay healthy.

many species of turtles grow a little bit for the rest of their lives. Good for you to keep yours going that long. I know they are long-lived, but a lot of people don’t try very hard to give them good conditions.

That’s a map turtle, right? I had one for a while, but I learned a terrible lesson. I got it from someone who moved into a house, and two turles were left there. This one had a hole from a dog bite in its shell.

The hole bugged me that it wasn’t closing up after a year, and it worried me. I thought he might be getting a fungus in there. All of the advice said I needed to keep the turtle drier (I didn’t have access to a herpatologist). So I did. He could climb into a bowl of water to soak, but kept the top of his shell dry. I was planning on letting him swim for a while each day. He was only in the dry area for a day and he died from dehydration, even with a bowl to soak in. Mystefying. I should have left him alone.

My tortoise is a sulcata tortoise. He is huge, about 45 pounds now. He will grow another couple of pounds a year for the rest of his life. We have had him for about 9 years now, and he was 3 when I got him.

We put him outside a lot in the summer in a steel panel dog kennel, and in the winter he is in the house. I don’t keep him in an enclosure; he needs to move and explore. He does sometimes make marks on furniture or the walls, and yes, he craps all over the place about once a week in the winter, and every day in the summer.

My goal is to have a special room for him so he won’t tear up the rest of the house. Interestingly, he isn’t very destructive once he gets used to how the room is laid out. He gets more damaging when you change things, and he challenges the new layout (when we moved, he was horrible, and tried to push down every wall).

I tried heat lamps and UV lights, but he doesn’t stay under them. He prefers to hide in corners, preferably right on top of a heat vent. In nature, they spend their whole day hiding in dens they dig, and they only come out at night to graze, so I don’t know if he always needs a ton of UV. I watch carefully for any signs of soft shell or jaw, but he seems fine. He gets tons every summer.

are really good tortoise food! What a cutie pie.