Tortoise groups on facebook and forums elsewhere, no matter if they're of generally good quality, often have a decent proportion of AB;DFs (Ain't Broke; Don't Fix) inhabiting them. Very often these are people who own a pre-legislation, wild-caught tortoise that they have kept in the garden for decades, or possibly inherited the ancient family tortoise after the death of a parent or grandparent.

 

These tortoises are true survivors, beginning their lives in the hot, harsh and dry wilderness, then being plucked from their home by traders, packed densely into crates with others of their own kind and transported by air or sea to the UK. During the 1960's it is thought that up to 80 tonnes of tortoises a year were transported from Europe to the UK. If they survived this journey without picking up a deadly disease or becoming so damaged in transit that they arrive smashed to pieces (a colleague's mother who owned a pet shop in the 1970's relayed a story of the monthly tortoise shipment arriving, and having to pick through the wooden crates of dead and dying animals in order to find saleable ones), they would be sold for pence, from greengrocers and pet shops, and taken home to the children to live a life in the back yard.

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Many would succumb quickly to the cold and damp British climate, from diseases like shell rot and respiratory infections. A large proportion died through inadequate hibernation methods- most were left to do as they pleased in the garden over winter, and thus many were killed or (at the least) blinded by freezing temperatures, dug up and eaten by native predators, or contracted fatal infections during this time. A few, although appearing outwardly healthy, will have succumbed to liver and kidney damage from a diet of bread, milk, dog/cat food and other inadequate foodstuffs. Some will have had such huge parasite burdens that they wasted away. Many just disappeared, escaping through gaps in the garden fence, never to be seen again. 

 

Most of the estimated 2 million tortoises imported from mainland Europe into the country between 1950 and 1970 should, in theory, with their long lifespans, still be here today. But we don't see them. True oldies (like my ancient boetgeri, Deedee) do exist, and there are plenty of them (enough to still be turning up in rescue centres and left in cardboard boxes on the doorsteps of pet shops and zoos across the country), but these are examples of the toughest of the bunch, who survived in spite of the poor husbandry they suffered at the hands of well-meaning owners.

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Which brings us to today, and to the plight of these elderly specimens. Many of these tortoises still live a similar lifestyle to the one they were forced into on their arrival in the UK- they make do with whatever the British weather throws at them, the lucky ones maybe being able to utilise a greenhouse or cold-frame as a dry area in which to warm up and probably also to hibernate. Lots will still have to survive on what is mostly an inadequate diet; we still hear about tortoises being fed dog and cat food, bread, milk, cheese, and tinned vegetables, which counteract all of the goodness they will be able to glean from edible wild plants and weeds within the garden, if they can access these at all. Many still hibernate freely within the garden, or are placed into a box of straw or shredded paper in early November which is left in a garage or shed until March the next year.

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The problem with this approach is that it does not take into account any of the modern husbandry methods developed over the years, or indeed the actual wild lifestyle of these animals. Most of them are Mediterranean tortoises, adapted to life in hot and dry habitats, with little access to rich food, making do with wild plants of low nutritional value, which are mostly dried out at the hottest times of the year. Their physiology is "built" in a way that extracts as much nutrition from a very meagre diet as they can, through millions of years of evolution in this habitat. When given a high protein, high fat, high sugar diet which is so common in captivity, not only with the old specimens, they suffer kidney and liver damage, gut irritation leading to dangerous increases in parasite load, and vastly increased growth.

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So why don't these long-time owners, who have had their tortoises for decades, pick up on this? Surely a person or family who has maintained this animal for 50 years is doing something right? And maybe they are- the fact that these are garden tortoises is a huge positive. An old Mediterranean tortoise living in the south of the UK with access to a sunny, weedy garden and a bit of a greenhouse will be many times healthier than the same animal living up north on a well-maintained lawn with a dog kennel as an escape from the elements, and the northern tortoise will be many times healthier again than a captive-bred specimen under a single lamp, on sawdust substrate, fed multicoloured pellets in a child's bedroom. But this doesn't change the fact that none of these owners are truly considering their pet's physiology, native habitat, or the risks posed by the UK climate when they make husbandry decisions.

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These pre-legislation animals have done the majority of their growing in the wild, and were caught as adults or sub-adults (easier to find than a well-hidden baby or juvenile tortoise) before transportation. They are immediately recognisable from their dull, domed shells, rubbed smooth by years of wild living. This is in stark contrast to the huge variety of shapes, sizes and colours of captive-bred tortoises.

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This is my main point- when you bring up a hatchling in a similar manner to the way people keep the oldies, with a rich diet, inadequate supplementation, inadequate UVB lighting and not enough heating, the results are visible sometimes within months. Their shells appear squashed or feel softened, each scute rises in tall peaks (this is called "pyramiding"), they grow wide, and round, their legs too fat to be fully retracted, their beaks overgrow and push forward in a shape similar to a parrot, their shells thicken yet remain far less dense than those of their wild relatives, and their colours are pale and anaemic. They show all the signs of an extremely unhealthy tortoise, and very prominently.

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But a tortoise that has reached (or nearly reached) adulthood in the wild, under the hot sun, in a calcium rich environment, eating a meagre diet, with growth interrupted by a yearly hibernation, will never look like this. Having laid down the keratin and bone density within the habitat it was designed for, it can hide a multitude of health problems within. It is like a house built by an experienced architect, with the finest materials, that has stood proudly for decades yet is now inhabited by a tenant who ignores the damp, the woodworm in the panelling, the rats in the flooded basement, the years of water trickling in from a leaking roof causing the plaster to crumble away. From the outside it is beautiful but the inside is rotten. 

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Tortoises are slow in many ways, and they live a seemingly laid-back life. The wild-caught animals still "going strong" today, with strong bones and internal organs, and the wisdom that comes from years of wild living (and maybe some fortuitous genetic mutations that allow them to survive in a cooler climate), are also slow to show any signs of illness. Indeed many never show any symptoms at all (or they do, like in a case I read about recently where the owners brushed off an old spur thigh's runny nose, indicative of a serious infection, as "just a cold", before it died in hibernation). The family tortoise that dies suddenly in the winter, tucked away in his dry little box in the shed will be seen as having lived a long and fruitful life. However the reality may be that this oldie struggled on with internal damage for many years while those that cared for him remained oblivious, before he finally succumbed during a poorly-planned and executed hibernation.

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What I ask of the AB;DF portion of the tortoise forum members who cry "but he's ALWAYS eaten pears and pinched the dog's biscuits all summer" or "I think if I made any changes to his environment it would kill him with shock!" (as though the warmth of a single heat lamp in a greenhouse is extreme and inescapable) is this: what is stopping you from bringing your husbandry into line with the accepted standards? Is it truly fear that any improvement would surprise an animal that has soldiered on for decades into an early death? I don't believe you (and even if you're telling the truth, it's wrong). But I do understand that building greenhouses, hanging lamps, mounting heaters and landscaping enclosures is hard work, confusing, expensive in the short term, and (for some) boring. 

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But we owe it to our pets to give them the healthiest, most enriching life possible. Personally I am always looking for ways to improve the lives of all of the animals under my care, and I know many others who are the same. We are always ready to share our experiences with others, not because we are dogmatic and egotistical, but because we CARE about all tortoises, not just our own. It is a terrible shame to resign these living family heirlooms, that have seen generations of human owners come and go, lived through wars, survived freezing winters and dog attacks and being dropped by clumsy grandchildren, gleefully rampaged through our gardens and bitten our bare feet in the summer, to a slow, cold death from entirely preventable causes. Improve things for them (and we will help you do this as best we can!) and they will thank you (or they probably won't, but you'll notice the difference, anyway).