How deep do we go???

[Dopey]

Hi all,

We have just started to build our outside hoose for our wee Horsfield. We have a couple of questions.

1. How deep should it be for him to dig around, at the moment we have gone down about a foot and a half is this too much?

2. Would it be ok to put a fence panel witn gaps about 10mm between slats or will he want to escape if he can see through that?

3. Where can we find a list of plants to put in his enclosure as we got a wee list from here but we were wondering if there are more he can have?

Thanks for any advice.

Pics will follow when we have more than a great big hole to show.

[fantapants]

i think that 18 inches would be fine. are you going to line the hole with wire mesh? as far as i knpow tortoises will try to escape out of any gap they can find, soyou will be mauch better getting a fence with no gaps at all. mine spend hours trying to get out of a crack and they dont like to give up! looking forward to seeing the pics.

[Dopey]

Thanks Tinkerbruce
We are going to line it all with a garden membrane thingy and put slabs in the bottom to stop him escaping. I thought that about the fence but was just checking what people thought.

[Tina]

As Ali said much better to have no gaps otherwise he will try and get through. Have you seen this plant list?

Untitled Document

Look forward to seeing your pics.

[GRB]

Can I ask something slightly off topic here...

I have an interest in native UK plants that are edible and am quite fond of the whole bush tucker thing (albeit with UK species). Anyway, I was just wondering if it is safe to assume that plants edible for humans are safe for torts? Is this the case?

Just thought I could perhaps offer some suggestions if that is the case. There are a lot of edible plants that don't seem to come up on any list...

[Tina]

Originally Posted by GRB

Can I ask something slightly off topic here...

I have an interest in native UK plants that are edible and am quite fond of the whole bush tucker thing (albeit with UK species). Anyway, I was just wondering if it is safe to assume that plants edible for humans are safe for torts? Is this the case?

Just thought I could perhaps offer some suggestions if that is the case. There are a lot of edible plants that don't seem to come up on any list...

I'm at the very early stages of learning about tortoise nutrition but it seems that toxicity is the first issue (so yes if safe for humans then safe for tortoises) but then there's the issue of whether a plant is high in certain things (oxalates which inhibit calcium absorption for example) so in that case not necessarily as safe for torts to eat as humans. The group I tend to go on to learn about nutrition is a yahoo group called TortsNutrition which you should join if you have an interest in this. It was you that mentioned Ray Mears wasn't it? Funnily enough I looked at his Wild Food book in the Garden Centre earlier today and thought that it had some really useful info in that I could use when feeding the torts but didn't have time to look through it properly. I think I'll go back at the weekend and have another look and purchase it if it's as good as I think.

[Dopey]

Thank you very much Tina that was a great help.

Here is a pic of the start of Sherberts wee hoose


This is where we have got to now


Any advice on what you think we should do would be greatly appreciated

Dom

[Tina]

That's starting to look really good. Have you seen this thread at all Dom?

http://www.reptileforums.co.uk/shell...sure-info.html

It has lots of pics of people's outdoor enclosures which might give you some ideas.

[Dopey]

Yeah we have thanks Tina. Its a great thread that has caused us more problems as we want to do so much in such a small space.

[Andy n Claire]

brill keep pics coming