Do Russian Tortoises Need Water

They may also use them to regulate body temperature and soak.
Do russian tortoises need water. Do your tortoise dance females require a little convincing when mating time rolls around. It needs to be a good size so that your tortoise can easily get inside of it and drink. For this reason most captive tortoises will rarely if ever seek out a source of standing water and drink from it. The semi solid white deposits of expelled urates.
In fact russian tortoises in the wild seek out burrows that have a higher humidity than the surrounding ground surface. Russian tortoises can be kept together but do not house different tortoise species together. Adult non breeding tortoises housed outdoors with full uv exposure and fed a varied diet generally do not need regular calcium or vitamin supplementation. Tortoises will do well on paper towels or newspapers for short periods of time as may be recommended following a surgery or other illness.
6 humidity is not vital for russian species despite common belief. Depriving the tortoise of water will result in urates being accumulated often to dangerous levels. Basically they are pretty picky animals. A mistake many people make is to assume a russian tortoise doesn t need water.
The tortoise should be able to easily enter and exit the water bowl. Provide a pan that s large enough for the tortoise to get in. Instead tortoises of all ages should be soaked once or twice a week in chin deep luke warm water. The water should be about two inches deep.
Active friendly and outgoing. Not only do these tortoises aestivate when it is cold but they also aestivate when it is too hot there is not enough food or there is not enough water. Tortoises are programmed not to use water in the bladder to eliminate these unlessreplenishment is available. Water provide constant access to a shallow container large enough for the tortoise to soak in and drink from.
Unfortunately many believe that tortoises naturally acquire almost all of their fluid requirements from its food and that therefore they do not require additional drinking water. Russians tortoises are indeed adapted to a semi arid environment and its system of eliminating waste via uric acid rather than via urea is clear evidence of this. As a result they only drink water opportunistically when it is present.