difficulty hibernating my tortoise

[tortina]

i have a 22 yr old herman tortoise every year he hibernates at the beginning on april in wellington, he has recently moved up to auckland and he wont hibernate, its already 2months past when he ususally hibernates, he stoped eating for awhile so i thought he must b getting ready so i stopped offering him food then 1 week ago i put him into his tea chest where he has hibernated for the past 10 yrs or so and hes climbed onto of all the newspaper and is just sitting there awake

what should i do ?

[Adrienne]

Its bound to be the warmer and more humid climate of auckland. Its still pretty mild. Sorry, not sure how to help you to get him to hibernate though.

[repto]

I thought you had a greek(spur thighed?),what ever,they are worse for this sort of thing.You will need to get a chiller or fridge setup with the right temps if you want him to have a proper hibernate which is part of being healthy.fertility rates of a few akld keepers are way low for this reason as well.Also this has been reversed with the use of a proper stable temperature controlled hibernating environment.You can get small wine chillers at a reasonable price which would be ideal for this.

[Navarre]

Send him to me and I will hibernate him for you

lol

Nav

[tortina]

i did have a greek he died about 3yrs ago not sure y.

ive hibernated my herman the same for the past 10yrs, i think the weather in auckland isnt cold enough yet, do u think i should take him out of the box or do u think eventually he will go to sleep, every other year my mum just put him in the box wen it went cold and he was fine.

[repto]

it will never be cold enough in akld.thats why its your job to provide the correct conditions.if you don`t and just have him shut in a teachest,in the dark,too cold to eat but not cold enough to have him the right suspended state that hibernation provides he will be using up stored body reserves etc that he needs to kick the systems into action come spring,he could in theory run out of these before that happens and die!I know people that use `box` hibernation and have done for years.it still comes down to the fact that you need stable cool temps of the right levels(i think thats like a fridge??)even in the natural outdoors as mine are they come up and down to find the temperature they want.Older males aree always the last to go down and seem to get worse as they age,but mine ate all down now.

[tortina]

ok great thanks for the help