08/27/2026
Long educational post. NO hateful comments , no cussing. Pay attention to who posted this before reply with something inappropriate.
Results of two sulcatas cohabitating.
We took in two sulcatas that offers a great opportunity for education. This is Dazzle, a three-year-old female sulcata. She lived her entire three years in a tortoise box with no substrate on one half, hay on the other half that is covered from lighting. There were red heat lights on the enclosure, a shallow plastic lid approximately 4-5 inches in diameter for a water dish. Red lights can harm their vision. We do not know what they were eating or if they had UV lighting of any kind. She shared this tortoise box with another sulcata, Razzle, a three-year-old male sulcata. At three years, Dazzle is 5 inches long with severe pyramiding. Razzle is 7 inches, and much less pyramiding. They both have soft spots on their carapace (top shell) and bottom shell (plastron). Dazzle’s soft spot is larger and softer.
Each section of the shell is called a scute. The blue circled area shows the lines close to the center of the scute grew with a normal gradual slant downward and outward. The farther out from center you see the slant is more severely downward, less and less outward as she grew. This means her husbandry (nutrition, access to water, proper UV exposure) decreased and continued to decrease. The red lines look like cracks but they are areas where the growth lines were severely stunted and grew so little that they and she did not grow outward anymore. If this were allowed to continue, she would die. Compare to Razzle’s growth lines over time. There is early pyramiding, then the growth began to level out and improve to some extent. This is the point where something changed. Razzle realized the provisions were not enough for two to be healthy and started defending his necessities. When we see these two examples living together and the one with less pyramiding is larger, this usually indicates the larger one began bullying the smaller one away from necessities. We see this even when they are the same s*x and when they live with a lot of space.
The soft spots will harden within months in the sun with proper diet and adding calcium to their diet. Which is why we always have cuttle bones in every enclosure. They will both begin to thrive and grow properly in SEPARATE enclosures without the stress of another.
They were purchased together at a reptile show. We hear repeatedly that breeders at these shows tell the buyer to get two so they won’t be lonely. Unfortunately, this is very bad information given to make more money. We see repeatedly the negative results, like this example, of why that is never a good idea. Not getting enough water, food, rest, and time out of the heat (lamp), happens when a sulcata is stressed from living with another or bullied away from these necessities by the other tortoise. Lack of these things causes pyramiding, Metabolic Bone Disease, and even death. Some come to us requiring vitamin shots, daily subcutaneous fluids, hand feeding, and oral medications to reverse the kidney damage and prevent death.
We do NOT put sulcatas together and we will NOT approve an adoption where they will share space with another tortoise.
