hi everyone i will be building an outdoor enclosure in the next couple of weeks for daisy but am worried now coz i keep reading that people have heat and uv lighs outside to, i dont have access to electric outside. daisy will be brough in at night, does she still need lights outside.

Hi!  Having electricity outside can provide useful extra options and enable you to keep your tort outside for longer but its not essential.  A cold frame can make a great difference in creating a warmer and drier place for your tort outside.  If getting one of those, make sure the tort has free access into and out of the coldframe so that Daisy can have choices. I've got a coldframe with an exit into a secure outside enclosure with a mesh roof and my tortoises make use of all the space. I'm assuimg you are keeping a Mediterranean species such as a Hermann here.  I find a coldframe very useful but even without one Daisy can benefit from time outdoors, and any kind of shelter inside a safe enclosure is worth having.  Smaller tortoises warm up quicker but loose their heat faster too, most people think more caution is advisable when trying them outside than with adult torts.  

I learn new things every year and improve my enclosure. For me the aim is enable them to be outside as much as possible.  They don't like cold and wet at the same time, but electricity isn't the only way of preventing that hapenning. 

Have fun with your enclosure!

Hi

If it's any help,we (my husband and I) are building our first  outdoor enclosure too. Our torts are 8 months old and we have built a small enclosure from bricks. We are intending to do as you are and bring them in on a night and so we're not having any outdoor heating/lighting.

The lid of the enclosure has been made of half chicken wire and half perspex, so the temp will be higher at the end with the perspex and so they can warm up and shelter under that end. We have also fixed the perspex to the lid at a gradient so any rain runs off but not into the enclosure. We are hoping this will work as good as cold frame set up.

It might be worth considering something similar, if your torts are only small.

Rachel.

p.s good luck!

thanks for the help and advice, that sounds like a good idea am going to start building it this weekend hopefully. my tortoise is a 3 year old horsfield have only had her about a month. i was worried that we were supposed to provide heat and uv light outside was panicking at how i was going to achieve this so you have helped alot.

am going to build my enclosure on my patio area as that is where  the sun is most of the day. will it be ok to place the tort on the concrete i will of course have a sand soil mix in the enclosure but thought the concrete would make it escape proof. how deep should the substrate be? 

Hi,

I have two outdoor enclosures, as the sun doesn't reach the main one until noon. But that main one is on concrete. However, I have dumped about four or five inches of sand/soil on top, so that she can dig into it, as you really need that for horsfields, which are a burrowing species.

If your enclosure is on soil, then you will need to make it escape proof, as horsfields are experts at digging tunnels (mine can dig an 8" tunnel into the ground in the middle of a lawn in about 20 minutes) and also at climbing (so don't have any right angles in the walls or he will shimmy up it, and it's a good idea to have an overhanging lip on the top of the walls so that if he does climb up he won't climb over.

Nina

Sorry, I meant to say how to make it escape proof if your enclosure is on soil. You can dig the whole enclosure out to a depth of a foot or two (they will tunnel that deep), line the bottom with plastic mesh or those sheets that you put on soil to keep weeds out, but that let water through, and then fill back in. And set the walls of the enclosure into the ground to about a foot deep (or more). Horsfields will dig long, deep tunnels -- that's the reason they are a rounder shape than other species -- it means that when they get to the end of a tunnel they can turn round easily and come out (if they were more oval it would be harder to turn round).

Nina

thanks for the advice, daisy is a horsfields. the enclosure will be set on concrete paving slabs and i am going to fill it with a mix of soil and playsand. wot soil would you buy? i am also having a wire mesh and wood frame on the top to keep cats, dog and child out. have built the enclosure but dont think its deep enough yet need to add some wood panels and make it deeper

The best thing to buy is bags of topsoil (which you can get from a garden centre or B&Q. I should have said that if you are making your enclosure on concrete, you need to make sure that any water can easily run off, as it can easily build up in a sudden downpour. Build some good hills, so the tortoise can climb to higher ground in a flash rainstorm.

Nina