Proper Outdoor Housing

Proper housing is very important if you want a safe and healthy tortoise.  Both of my tortoises have outdoor homes.  MacGyver is outdoors 24/7 and ONLY comes inside when the weather is too cold, being I live in a very warm climate this is rare.  Indi is being temporarily housed indoors, in my kitchen to be exact.  I do have an outdoor enclosure built for the little one, but right now, its too big and I need to section off an area to make it more hatchling sized. I will bring in Indi every single night as he/she is just a little baby.

To house your tortoises outdoors you must protect them from the elements as well as any predators you may have.  My setups are not "perfect".  I can do some upgrading but they will work for now.

I'll post a picture of them and break down what I did, and what I plan to do eventually.

Mac's Kingdom

Mac's home is very similar to Indi's, with a little differences here and there.  

I bought a 4 x 8 piece of OSB plywood (the cheap stuff), I placed that down on the floor to prevent Mac from burrowing right out of his enclosure! Russians are amazing escape artists! I got a hold of 14 cinder blocks and this is what I used as the walls of the enclosure. Ideally you would use two layers stacked on top of each other of cinder block. What I did for the time being was capped the corners with some slates.  The corners seem to be a torts favorite area at trying to escape.  I used Top Soil with nothing added as my substrate.  I used about 6 bags of Top Soil here to achieve a 4.5" depth, good for burrowing.  Russian torts LOVE to burrow!  I added a Spider Plant and some Succulents to pretty it up and provide more shade.  

You must be very careful at which plants you choose for your enclosure.  There are tort safe plants and those should be used.  You can find a wonderful list of tort safe plants here. You should also avoid any plants that have been treated with pesticides.  If you cant get your hands on any pesticide free plants, I suggest you replant these plants in new pesticide free soil and let them sit for at least 6 months.  This should allow time for the pesticide to rid itself.  Succulents can be given as a treat and should be fed sparingly as a part of a varied diet.  The succulents in Mac's pen have all been eaten now.  I took this pic before he got a chance to destroy it!  You will see that I placed a slate down as his food tray.  This is to help with the trimming of his beak.    I also place a terra cotta plant saucer in there as his water dish. All around the enclosure I used an xpen I had laying around.  This helps keep the critters out, and just in case Mac gets a little crazy he cant get out no matter what!

Here you can see all the succulents are gone! He chomped them down to nothing, but no worries, I have a bunch more growing for him.  In this picture you'll see that I out lined his food slate with river stones.  He kept on dragging his food in the soil and I was afraid he would start getting bites of soil in... so to avoid that, I placed these stones down, problem solved! You will also see I placed stones around his water dish, he constantly got his dish dirty and muddy, these stones help with that. 

The roach/any spray you see in the picture has since been removed, I snapped a pic before I realized it was there.  To help out with ants I spray a ring of this stuff all around the OUTSIDE of his enclosure.  This helps stop ants and nasty little bugs from living with Mac.  NEVER SPRAY INSIDE THE ENCLOSURE.

I attempted to throw some Tesudo mix seeds in there that I bought from Tortoise Supply, but Mac didnt allow that at all.  Once the seeds started sprouting Mac started eating!