How to Care For a Desert Tortoise

Video Transcript

"Hi. I'm Tim Cole with Austin Reptile Service and I've been keeping reptiles and amphibians for over forty years. I'm here to talk about desert tortoises. All desert tortoises are protected in the states they live in. Some to one degree or another possibly more serious. I know quite a few rehabers in Arizona and California have worked with these animals. These are not an animal that can be re-released into the wild for a variety of reasons, but we do occasionally get them in when rescues are not able to sell them, but sometimes they do reproduce and this is a female desert tortoise. Adult. We keep them in outdoor pens that has soil they can dig into. We set them up with a doghouse as a shaded cover and they immediately went in and started digging a burrow beneath it. They get fed a variety of veggies but they prefer to eat a lot of the dried plants, grasses and weeds that occur right here in the yard. Once again we're keeping them outside so the natural sunlight provides UV light that they require and the necessary heat source."