will not hibernate only in the summer!!

[dino]

:roll: Hi can anyone help I have a pair of horsefield torts one male one female . the male is four years old and I have had him since a baby. Every year when I try to hibernate him he refuses to go to sleep, the conditions are fine as I have no probs with the female. The biggest problem is that he wants to hibernate at this time of the year( summer ) he becomes very dopey and just wants to sleep. Has anyone else had this problem ?

[KearasNana]

Hi

Wow I have not heard that before! I am sure some one will be along in a mo who has more experience, who can help. If you dont mind me asking how do you go about winding them down ready for hibernation?

[dino]

Hi thanks for your reply, when I am preparing them for hibernation I gradually stop feeding them and bring their internal core temperature down over a period of weeks , by reducing the heat until there is none at all , and putting them in an outside room gradually building the time up that they spend in there . I also bath them every day for a few weeks as well to make sure that there bladder is full and there stomach is empty and so when the time is wright I put them seperatly in a small box inside a larger box both filled with hay. For the first week I don `t open the box only listen then I check them weekly and weigh them. Unfortunately I can only get dino off into a half sleep for nearly two weeks !! then I find that he has tried to break his way out of the first box and I have found him sitting on top of the first box , so I have to bring him out of hibernation and warm him up etc,, etc !! The problem is now its nice warm weather he is very sleepy and I have to wake him up and place him under a lamp and show him food which hes not really interested in and when I move him from his green house to his garden enclosure he heads straight for his house goes across his bridge and into his house where he stays asleep all day!!!
My other tortoise Lyla is much more normal she will potter round during the day eating digging etc goes under the lamp if it turns cool and best of all she hibernates I think that Dino`s body clock is backwards but I don`t know how to reset it .javascript:emoticon(':shock:')

[jo__]

Hiya, maybe your temps were a bit too high? What method of hibernation were you using? I usually use box method, but this year my tort kept waking up so I swapped to fridge method it worked a treat All you have to do is make sure the temps stay stable (mine stayed a constant 4c) and open the fridge door a couple of times a day Sorry i know this may not be relavant now, but mite be useful when winter comes round again!!
Jo x

[dino]

Hi thanks for your reply I was thinking about the fridge method but then again I thought if he does n`t want to hibernate then why bother!
They are in the outside freezer room in boxes and the temps pretty stable, my other tortoise does twelve weeks there :lol:

[nina]

Hi Dino,

I have something a little like your problem in that every year my Boris gets really sleepy about the beginning of September - doesn't matter what the temperatures are like - and I have to wake him up each morning (if I don't he will sleep for days). After about three or four weeks of this he then just seems to get through it and is fine. I start winding him down for hibernation in November and last year he went into the fridge around Christmas.
I read a really good article recently - sort of a care sheet for horsfields, combined with lots of observations of them in the wild, and one of the things they said was that horsfields will often want to bed down come August, and it doesn't matter what the temperatures are (although it might have something to do with the length of day). Here's a link to the article - it's long but well worth reading:
http://www.dght.de/ag/schildkroeten/pdf/ehorsfield.pdf