Exotic and Unusual Pets - Baby African Tortoises
  • 13 years ago
Exotic Pets - Baby African Tortoises - as part of the expert series by GeoBeats. Hi, my name is Ken. I am coming from Exotic Pets in beautiful downtown Las Vegas, Nevada. These are very cute little guys. These are African Spurred Tortoises. It is Geochelone sulcata. They come from the central plains of Southern Africa. The neat thing about these animals is when you see the documentaries on lions and wildebeests, what you do not see is these things sitting in the grass where the lions live. They are fairly easy to care for as long as you are prepared for the size that is involved with them. Males can get up to 300 pounds. Easily, an average sulcata is going to get up to at least 150 pounds. They can be kept indoors for the first couple years of their lives but afterwards, they are going to have to be kept outside. They become mini bulldozers and they will knock everything over. They burrow quite extensively. They will tear up your backyard. If you are prepared for all of those things, these make excellent pets. They cannot tolerate very cold temperature so, in the winter, for folks who live in places where it gets below say, 60 degrees in the winter, they are going to have to be housed inside. To properly care for these animals, you need a large enclosure with dirt for bedding. A large shallow water bowl. A food bowl. They are vegetarians so, they eat a lot of leafy greens. They also eat hay and other grasses and weeds. They are food will have to supplemented with a multi-vitamin supplement and calcium and they are actually rather intelligent and rather charming when they get bigger. One of the nicest tortoises in the world, as long as you are prepared for how big they get.