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He or she (too early to tell) was found in a San Antonio neighborhood. The finders tried to find the owner for a week. With no owner coming forward after a week, they brought this healthy baby to us.
This is a juvenile sulcata tortoise. You will be required to let it live outdoors when temperatures are above 60. You MUST provide an enclosure of at least 200 square feet in size to adopt this baby. The enclosure needs to be planted with tortoise safe vegetation and should have places for hiding/sheltering. The enclosure should be constructed so that it can grow with the animal, and in the next five years or so (as the animal reaches 10 inches) you must agree to let it have the run of at least 6,000 square feet of your fenced yard. Therefore, you must show that you have 6000 square feet available at the time of your application.
In order to adopt a sulcata or leopard tortoise allow them to always live outdoors where it can enjoy natural sunlight, lots of shady spots for hot summers, lots of plants and other hiding places, a warm shelter that it can freely go into when temperatures drop below 60 degrees, clean fresh water, and plentiful natural graze just like it would have in the wild. That means grasses, weeds, and cactus, but a little snack of store-bought produce is okay once in a while but not as a regular diet. Please do not feed your sulcata or leopard tortoise fruit or produce that is high in oxalates, such as spinach or carrots, as these can cause bladder stones which may be fatal. Do your homework.
They must have at least 6,000 square feet to roam that it will NOT be sharing with another tortoise, so it doesn't have to worry about fighting or mating. In the wild, these animals have home ranges that are measured in miles, not feet. We've already taken them from their habitat, the least we can do is try and emulate it in captivity as best as possible.
You may NOT adopt more than one sulcata or leopard, unless you have multiple 6000-square-foot enclosures, even the cute harmless little babies. It is dangerous for the animal as it grows, they do NOT need a companion, and we will NOT approve the adoption of more than one sulcata per enclosure.
TEMPS NEED to BE KEPT ABOVE 60 DEGREES (this means you might have to bring your animal into your home during an historic freeze event). DO NOT BOTHER APPLYING if you aren't willing to do WHATEVER IT TAKES to keep this animal alive. You MUST have a way to monitor the temperature inside of the tortoise's outdoor house (buy a Bluetooth thermometer) and you should be willing to purchase a good generator, and/or bring the tortoise inside your house if the power goes out and you can't keep the temps in your tortoise's house above 60. If you are not in good physical shape to lift and carry a heavy sulcata or leopard tortoise in an extreme cold weather event don't apply to adopt.
Please understand that these animals can live for 150 years and can reach 200 lbs. You'll need to have a plan in place for both of these eventualities.
If you submit photos of your sulcata or leopard tortoise habitat (aka: your yard) with a piece of paper with your name on it or some other form of authentication in the same frame as the habitat then we will review your application, otherwise your application will expire in 30 days without being reviewed. Pictures should be e-mailed to contact@texastortoiserescue.com (this is the only way to submit your photos - please don't text them to me or send them over Facebook). Photos should show sturdy walls or fence of the enclosure, hides, water source, heated house (or explain your plans for this) Once your application has been reviewed and approved, we'll send you an e-mail that has a link to our calendar or contact information for a foster home so that you can schedule the pick up at a time that is convenient for you. The adoption fee for a sulcata or leopard tortoise is $150, payable through the adoption link I will text you once you are approved. You can pay using the link anytime before picking up the tortoise. You may pay cash at the time when you pick up the animal only at our Bandera, Pflugerville, and Bertram locations. Foster homes will not take cash.
This little sulcata is in our Bandera facility.
He or she (too early to tell) was found in a San Antonio neighborhood. The finders tried to find the owner for a week. With no owner coming forward after a week, they brought this healthy baby to us.
This is a juvenile sulcata tortoise. You will be required to let it live outdoors when temperatures are above 60. You MUST provide an enclosure of at least 200 square feet in size to adopt this baby. The enclosure needs to be planted with tortoise safe vegetation and should have places for hiding/sheltering. The enclosure should be constructed so that it can grow with the animal, and in the next five years or so (as the animal reaches 10 inches) you must agree to let it have the run of at least 6,000 square feet of your fenced yard. Therefore, you must show that you have 6000 square feet available at the time of your application.
In order to adopt a sulcata or leopard tortoise allow them to always live outdoors where it can enjoy natural sunlight, lots of shady spots for hot summers, lots of plants and other hiding places, a warm shelter that it can freely go into when temperatures drop below 60 degrees, clean fresh water, and plentiful natural graze just like it would have in the wild. That means grasses, weeds, and cactus, but a little snack of store-bought produce is okay once in a while but not as a regular diet. Please do not feed your sulcata or leopard tortoise fruit or produce that is high in oxalates, such as spinach or carrots, as these can cause bladder stones which may be fatal. Do your homework.
They must have at least 6,000 square feet to roam that it will NOT be sharing with another tortoise, so it doesn't have to worry about fighting or mating. In the wild, these animals have home ranges that are measured in miles, not feet. We've already taken them from their habitat, the least we can do is try and emulate it in captivity as best as possible.
You may NOT adopt more than one sulcata or leopard, unless you have multiple 6000-square-foot enclosures, even the cute harmless little babies. It is dangerous for the animal as it grows, they do NOT need a companion, and we will NOT approve the adoption of more than one sulcata per enclosure.
TEMPS NEED to BE KEPT ABOVE 60 DEGREES (this means you might have to bring your animal into your home during an historic freeze event). DO NOT BOTHER APPLYING if you aren't willing to do WHATEVER IT TAKES to keep this animal alive. You MUST have a way to monitor the temperature inside of the tortoise's outdoor house (buy a Bluetooth thermometer) and you should be willing to purchase a good generator, and/or bring the tortoise inside your house if the power goes out and you can't keep the temps in your tortoise's house above 60. If you are not in good physical shape to lift and carry a heavy sulcata or leopard tortoise in an extreme cold weather event don't apply to adopt.
Please understand that these animals can live for 150 years and can reach 200 lbs. You'll need to have a plan in place for both of these eventualities.
If you submit photos of your sulcata or leopard tortoise habitat (aka: your yard) with a piece of paper with your name on it or some other form of authentication in the same frame as the habitat then we will review your application, otherwise your application will expire in 30 days without being reviewed. Pictures should be e-mailed to contact@texastortoiserescue.com (this is the only way to submit your photos - please don't text them to me or send them over Facebook). Photos should show sturdy walls or fence of the enclosure, hides, water source, heated house (or explain your plans for this) Once your application has been reviewed and approved, we'll send you an e-mail that has a link to our calendar or contact information for a foster home so that you can schedule the pick up at a time that is convenient for you. The adoption fee for a sulcata or leopard tortoise is $150, payable through the adoption link I will text you once you are approved. You can pay using the link anytime before picking up the tortoise. You may pay cash at the time when you pick up the animal only at our Bandera, Pflugerville, and Bertram locations. Foster homes will not take cash.
https://texastortoiserescue.com/adopt-a-tortoise/
DO NOT E-MAIL WITH ADOPTION INQUIRIES. USE THE FORM PROVIDED.
2.
Approve Application
CTTR will review the application after receiving photos. View website for complete instructions and details.
3.
Take the Pet Home
Once approved, you will schedule a time to come adopt your new shelled friend!
Additional adoption info
Do not call or e-mail with adoption inquiries. Our resources are very limited and we cannot respond to adoption requests submitted via e-mail. Please use the forms that are provided online for that purpose.
Do not call or e-mail with adoption inquiries. Our resources are very limited and we cannot respond to adoption requests submitted via e-mail. Please use the forms that are provided online for that purpose.
Watch our Facebook Page for new meet and greet events!
Watch our Facebook Page for new meet and greet events!
More about this rescue
This all started with a Russian tortoise named Trogdor, a box turtle named Stuart, and a sulcata named Thor. Sometime in the late 2000s while visiting a pet store on a date with my husband, I became rather enchanted with a Russian tortoise that the store had for sale. The employee I spoke with couldn't tell me anything about the animal; I wanted to know if it was wild caught or captive bred, and about how old it was. He didn't know, but laughed at me - actually laughed! - when I said I wanted to know if I was looking at a 5 year old tortoise or a 50 year old tortoise. Apparently that was a funny question, but to this day I'm not sure why.
Fast forward a few days and my sweet husband presents me with a gift. You guessed it: the Russian tortoise from the pet store. We named him Trogdor, and kept him until we learned just how magnificent of escape artists Russian tortoises can be. Because we had one tortoise, friends recommended me as a "tortoise keeper" to an adventuresome woman who was leaving the country to travel to far away lands following her husband's job, except she couldn't take her three-toed box turtle, Stuart, with her. So Stuart came to live with me, and to this day I look forward to seeing her sweet curious face every single morning.
Circa 2012 I received a call from a friend and colleague who is a very experienced herpetologist and whom I've always held in high esteem (hi, Andy!). He said that a sulcata had been abandoned in a field, and could I care for it?
"What the heck am I supposed to do with a sulcata?"
The sulcata in question was none other than Thor, who really got the whole idea of rescue marinating for me. My friend quickly educated me about basic sulcata husbandry, and we had a long talk about how often these animals become neglected or abandoned because their keepers can't care for them anymore. The zoos are overrun, and there's just no place for them to go, so they are often dumped and left to fend for themselves. This presents a whole myriad of issues that are too long and complex to go into today, but suffice to say it's not a good idea.
Life happened, we moved out into the country, built a fence for a garden, went through several different (and horribly ugly) iterations of enclosures for Stuart and Thor, and did a lot of thinking. And tinkering. And more thinking. And finally one day after work was over, the kids' soccer practices were over, and everybody had been fed, I started fiddling around with blog sites and created a free little Wordpress page called Central Texas Tortoise Rescue. And then I figured out how to create a Facebook page. And then people started contacting us.
It actually works. If you build it, they really will come. We couldn't believe that a) people were able to find us in the vast world of the interwebs, and b) there was actually a legitimate need in the community that we could help serve in a very unique way. We were just your run-of-the-mill overworked soccer parents with full time jobs trying to hold it together and wondering how many more nights this week we would be eating macaroni and cheese and chicken nuggets. It had never occurred to us that we had anything special to offer, or that we could do something that really mattered.
This really matters.
In the very early days, we hadn’t done any fundraising yet and honestly didn't even know how to begin, but were faced with a sick tortoise. Luckily, we had a few donations, but we quickly spent all of them on vet care for the sick animal. And then we spent several hundred dollars of our own money on vet care. Finally, any extra that we could squeeze out of our budget ran out and we made the very difficult decision that our family couldn’t support his care any longer. Right then and there, we decided that money should never be the reason we lose an animal, so we turned ourselves into a non-profit and the rest, as they say, is history.
This all started with a Russian tortoise named Trogdor, a box turtle named Stuart, and a sulcata named Thor. Sometime in the late 2000s while visiting a pet store on a date with my husband, I became rather enchanted with a Russian tortoise that the store had for sale. The employee I spoke with couldn't tell me anything about the animal; I wanted to know if it was wild caught or captive bred, and about how old it was. He didn't know, but laughed at me - actually laughed! - when I said I wanted to know if I was looking at a 5 year old tortoise or a 50 year old tortoise. Apparently that was a funny question, but to this day I'm not sure why.
Fast forward a few days and my sweet husband presents me with a gift. You guessed it: the Russian tortoise from the pet store. We named him Trogdor, and kept him until we learned just how magnificent of escape artists Russian tortoises can be. Because we had one tortoise, friends recommended me as a "tortoise keeper" to an adventuresome woman who was leaving the country to travel to far away lands following her husband's job, except she couldn't take her three-toed box turtle, Stuart, with her. So Stuart came to live with me, and to this day I look forward to seeing her sweet curious face every single morning.
Circa 2012 I received a call from a friend and colleague who is a very experienced herpetologist and whom I've always held in high esteem (hi, Andy!). He said that a sulcata had been abandoned in a field, and could I care for it?
"What the heck am I supposed to do with a sulcata?"
The sulcata in question was none other than Thor, who really got the whole idea of rescue marinating for me. My friend quickly educated me about basic sulcata husbandry, and we had a long talk about how often these animals become neglected or abandoned because their keepers can't care for them anymore. The zoos are overrun, and there's just no place for them to go, so they are often dumped and left to fend for themselves. This presents a whole myriad of issues that are too long and complex to go into today, but suffice to say it's not a good idea.
Life happened, we moved out into the country, built a fence for a garden, went through several different (and horribly ugly) iterations of enclosures for Stuart and Thor, and did a lot of thinking. And tinkering. And more thinking. And finally one day after work was over, the kids' soccer practices were over, and everybody had been fed, I started fiddling around with blog sites and created a free little Wordpress page called Central Texas Tortoise Rescue. And then I figured out how to create a Facebook page. And then people started contacting us.
It actually works. If you build it, they really will come. We couldn't believe that a) people were able to find us in the vast world of the interwebs, and b) there was actually a legitimate need in the community that we could help serve in a very unique way. We were just your run-of-the-mill overworked soccer parents with full time jobs trying to hold it together and wondering how many more nights this week we would be eating macaroni and cheese and chicken nuggets. It had never occurred to us that we had anything special to offer, or that we could do something that really mattered.
This really matters.
In the very early days, we hadn’t done any fundraising yet and honestly didn't even know how to begin, but were faced with a sick tortoise. Luckily, we had a few donations, but we quickly spent all of them on vet care for the sick animal. And then we spent several hundred dollars of our own money on vet care. Finally, any extra that we could squeeze out of our budget ran out and we made the very difficult decision that our family couldn’t support his care any longer. Right then and there, we decided that money should never be the reason we lose an animal, so we turned ourselves into a non-profit and the rest, as they say, is history.
Other pets at this
rescue
We'll also keep you updated on Shelby's adoption status with email updates.
