What did you do with whatever else you've got?

[tommyardin]

You just have to keep an eye on them. Late summer/early autumn they start to slow down as the temperature cools, so they start to eat less and less. They need to have no crap in the bowels as this rots during hibernation and can cause them problems. Once theyve not eaten for a while, its safe to hibernate them. Its important to not let them be exposed to frost as tis can destroy thier eyes. They are hardy little buggers. And Tommy, in 30 years time youll need a bigger fridge, mines over 5 kilos now

Yeah the little f-----s do grow into big f-----s  :lol


Yes as Agricola stated you do have to do a wind down process before hibernating them, October into early November they start to slow down and you will find they start to try to bury themselves in the soil in their pen. We stop feeding them at this point and shut them in their hutch with shredded newspaper as bedding (They don't eat that) but we give them plenty of water to drink so they flush out their bladders and the water helps to clear out the poo from their intestines, we also start giving them luke warm baths as tortoises (Now you are not going to believe this) can drink water up through a vent their tails, so bathing them makes them drink water whether they want to or not. Tortoises produce a lot of Urates in their pee that shows as white slightly more solid liquid in their pee, during the warm bathing they pee a lot because of this involuntary drinking of water and the bath water will have lots of Urates in it, we bath them each day until the Urates stop being in the bath water. Contrary to popular belief tortoise can not swim so bath water needs to be only a few inches deep. During the wind down process usually about 8 days we turn one heat lamp off in the hutch completely and put other lamp on a timer so it come on for 1 hour every 4 then as the days go by we increase the off time until the lamp is completely off for 2 days, after that they are really cold to the touch and very very dozy. That is when all my beer has to come out of their fridge and in they go bedded down in strips of shredded newspaper. 4 months later out they come and are give a bath at about plus 10 degrees and it starts the wake up process and they are all usually eating within 2 or 3 days.
You know what not once have they said anything or complained in any way because of that treatment.
All three of our torts are boys and they get amorousness with each other (Homosexual tendencies) and try to hump each other all three on each others back they look like a 3 carriage train as the first one is trying to get away the other try to keep up its so funny and the squeak as the hump. lol! Bit like me!  :eek  i will try and post a short bit of the video.