African Spurred Tortoise - As Pets

As Pets

Due to their reputation for having a pleasant temperament, more and more sulcata tortoises are brought home as pets. However, these animals provide significant challenges to their keepers, due to their dietary, temperature requirements, and their size.

A captive diet for G. sulcata should be organized around five important factors: high dietary fiber, low protein, low fruit or sugary foods, adequate calcium, and not overfeeding. Grasses should make up at least 75% of a captive sulcata's diet, to provide the high dietary fiber found in the wild. Young sulcatas grow very fast - they can easily double in size each year during the first three years. For proper bone and shell development, their diet must include adequate calcium. In the wild, this is provided by a high calcium content in the soil, and therefore in their diet, but in captivity calcium supplements are required.

Many "wet" vegetables can cause health problems in large quantities. Red leaf lettuce, prickly pear cactus pads, hibiscus leaves, hay from various grasses and dandelions are some of the better foods to make up the bulk of their diet. They will attempt to eat most types of plants eventually and some common garden plants can be very toxic to them, such as azaleas.

Protein is lacking in their natural diet, and should be not be fed in captivity. Lack of calcium combined with high protein does contribute to some shell malformations and causes pyramiding. Fruit should only be given in moderation. They will eat protein such as caterpillars and snails if given the opportunity, but this should be a very small portion of their diet.

The diet available to captive sulcatas can be much more nutritious than in the wild, which offers its own challenges. Sulcatas are voracious to offset the dearth of nutrients in their natural habitat; care must be taken to insure the tortoise does not overfeed. Bedding, or other plant material in their enclosures, should be restricted to grasses or grass-based hay, to ensure that the animal does not take in too much nutrition.

Sulcatas should be kept above 60F(16°C), which means many areas will require special winter accommodations. Sulcatas need a large enclosure as they get bigger and should be given a generous grazing area. Their high fiber diets (grass), their temperature requirements, and their space requirements, mean they are challenging pets.

Per CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora), a zero annual export quota has been established for Geochelone sulcata for specimens removed from the wild and traded for primarily commercial purposes.