Care of Red Footed Tortoise

Your tortoise will need areas of shade and sunlight and a place to burrow or hide. Plant bushes or shrubs that can provide shade and grazing such as Hibiscus and Yucca and maybe even something like Wandering Jew for cover. Provide a partially buried hide box and an area of loose dirt and leaf mulch in one corner. The plants, hide box and mulch area will provide your Red-Foot with several areas of retreat. A shallow pan for water is needed. Dig a depression or hole to match the water pan's size and place the pan so that the top is at ground level.

This provides easy access but make sure your tortoise can easily exit the water dish at will. Add a few rocks and maybe a small fallen branch or two to break up the scenery. Make sure branches are not so big that the tortoise can fall off and land on its back. It is also recommended to hose down the entire enclosure daily and soak your tortoise at least once a week. This simulated rainfall can help stimulate your Tortoise's appetite and increase it's activity levels. There are different substrates available for indoor and outdoor enclosures but for my outdoor enclosure I opt for the ground itself, planted as specified above.

Breeding

Red-foots have peculiar mating rituals. If two Red-foot Tortoises are to mate, they first stand at each other’s side. The instigating male will begin shaking its head to the side. If the other Tortoise is a male, it will shake its head in response, and the two will usually get into a mini-brawl. If it is a female, the Tortoise will not respond. The male will sniff the female’s tail to make sure it’s a female, and if confirmed, mating will commence. During a mating session, the male will make a clucking sound, which is similar to the clucking of a hen. Eggs incubate for about 120 days. Incubation temperatures should remain at 86 degrees Fahrenheit.

Red-foots are capable of producing eggs at any time during the year, although seasonal activity may be noted. One collection of tortoises kept outside in Kansas during warm weather and indoors during the colder months, laid eggs only from October to April for 7 consecutive years (Renquist, 1994). Because red-foots are capable of producing eggs at any time, it is advisable to have a nesting chamber full of damp peat moss and sand available to the females at all times.

A nesting chamber can be constructed by creating a large, open topped box with a ramp so the tortoises can enter and exit at will. The chamber should have the dimensions of 4 x 4 x 2 (l x w x h in feet) and be filled with moist nesting material to a depth of at least 20 inches (50 cm). It is important that more than one male be included in a breeding group, male to male combat is important in inducing breeding in red-foots.

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