There are never too many questions Claire. Shoot away. Sulcatas originate from the Sahara Desert and the Sahel region of Africa. In the wild they live in hot, dry, semi-arid grassland areas and thorn shrublands. They can be found in Chad, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Mali, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal and the Sudan. Their shells are slighty bumpy when they are young and will stay that way for many years but from fully grown specimens I've come across, the shell tends to smooth out quite a bit. Ours are already starting to flatten and it's because they are burrowers in the wild. A smooth shell helps with the digging. Unlike leopards, I haven't seen many adults that don't smooth out and if this does happen it's most likely down to bad diet and/or bad enclosure. Unfortunately I haven't weighed ours in a long while but I'll get on it soon and let ya know. It's a real struggle to lift the big fella up now by myself and I'm using "my creative talents" to try and design some kind of trolley with forks to save my back in the future.
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Horsefields are a great tortoise...always have great characters. I guess I'm a lazy tortoise keeper as none of mine hibernate so I don't have to worry about that. I know how hard it is to get it right as I have kept Hermanns in the past. How's it going for you this year?
Mick.