Baby Redfoot Tortoise Tips!

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:01]Hey, what's up? Today we're going to talk about  baby tortoises, but I just couldn't resist feeding all of our fun little maniacs, the curly tails. We  got some fluker crickets here. Here come the curly tails, everybody. Uh, when they come out, they  see me, they come out. I like to hook them up. Oh, come on, buddy. There's one right there.  Anyway, today, baby turtles coming up.

[00:00:29]Did I say turtles? I meant tortoises. We have  some baby tortoises here. We got curly tails everywhere. We got bites. I mean, it's a regular  free-for-all. I'm just doing a little soak on some of our beautiful cherry heads and redfoots. And  these guys are a few months old. And you remember the hypo. Look at that one. How cool is that hypo  redfoot? Very, very beautiful. Here we have a beautiful cherry head. Look at that dark plron.  And their little yolk sacks are being absorbed nicely. Uh, some of these are a little smaller.  Here's another cherry head right here. And then, of course, that's a redfoot. And then that's  a cherry head. I can kind of tell from the top that's a red foot. Um, you just see the vibrant  colors. This This might fool me. That might be I'm going redfoot. Yep, it is. All right. So,  you can see the vibrant colors of the cherry heads. And then you have your red foot. So, I'm  separating them by cherry heads. Look at this.

[00:01:22]These are all red foots. Those are the cherry  heads. Very cool. Yep, I was correct. Oh, look at that. That is a cherry head. That's amazing. Dark  cherry head right there. All right, so these guys have been soaking for a little while, as have  our new recruits. These guys I just pulled out of the incubator today. Look at how pretty they  are. These are some beautiful red foots. Look at how light. My gosh. And there's their umbilicus.  There's a yolk sack there. But that's great. These guys are definitely related to the hypo. They must  be carrying that gene because they are certainly uh extremely vibrant. Look at this. These are all  red foots except for this guy. It's a cherry head.

[00:02:01]So yeah. Um people always ask me, you know, can  you tell the sex when they're young? And no, I you can't do it. People who say they can do it might  be fibbing. All right. Or a little bit wacky. Um I've been working with turtles and tortoises a  long time and I can't tell the difference when they're little. Uh who cares? buy a couple,  get them together. Uh, the good thing about cherryheads and red foots is they really aren't  combative. Not like a sculcata, so you're not really going to run into too many problems as far  as them growing up and then wanting to bash each other. So, that's good news. Uh, you can see we've  got a malberry leaf and some cactus that I'm going to go ahead and clip up and make a little salad  for these guys. And we're going to go ahead and put them back in their nursery pen. Uh, things to  remember. You know, I thought we'd do like a baby tortoise tips today because hey, look, there's  a big tortoise. um because it's been a while and I'm sure our original Redfoot and Cherry Head  Tortoise baby uh videos are way far down. I mean, years ago, you'd have to do some digging. So, I  thought, hey, let's do this today. Let's hang out with the babies. I love them. They're really cute.  We're going to combine them. We're going to put them all together. But right now, we're giving  them a good soak. And when they're babies like this, it's important to soak them because you want  to keep them hydrated. You want to see if they'll pass any urates, which is that milky white powdery  substance that will come out of their cloa. That's their uric acids. Uh that's how they urinate. They  to it in a solid. You can see there's a a little bit of remnants there. Some of them. Oh, that's  actually from the babies. So that's not urates.

[00:03:28]That's actually just vermiculite and some eggshell  that was stuck to their carrapase. But yeah, you want to soak them. It's important uh for baby  tortoises when you're keeping them. I'd soak them for about 10 minutes or so. Lukewarm water. Just  enough water that they can kind of dip their heads in. You see, if they flip over, they'd be able  to kind of breathe. That's important because baby turtles and tortoises can be a little clumsy. Uh,  and they climb over each other in the water bowl, and you don't want them to kind of flip over and  then not be able to breathe, uh, and therefore drown. That would stink. I've had that happen in  water dishes that are in fact a little too deep in their enclosure. So, you got to be careful.  Also, what kind of water dish you give. I mean, I like real shallow ones. The shallow pots, the  potting soil ones or the uh what do they call the terracotta um you know, flower pot bases are  really good. And you can take gravel and minimize the de depth. You can actually make it even more  shallow by adding gravel to that and then filling that up with water. Although the gravel pain  in the neck to clean. If you can find a really shallow dish, do it. That's the way to go. Um  so yeah, these guys, um I kind of raise them up outdoors. We'll head over to that little play pen  in a little while, but basically for me down here in Florida, most of the year we have no drama. Um,  you want to keep them outdoors in a wellprotected area. If you have a sun porch, some people have  screened in porches. Uh, just keep them away from predators, birds, raccoons, rats, fire ants, um,  all manner of predators will get these guys. And you don't want that to happen. You want them  to be safe and sound and secure. So that's uh, that's your part. You got to do that. you got to  be mama tortoise. Now, mama tortoise just lays the eggs and splits. And then with these guys,  it takes about 5 months for them to hatch out, whether they're cherryheads or redfoots. So, just  about 5 months. Again, look at how pretty some of the colors are on these red foots. These are  incredible. Looks like we've got some of our crazy leg red foots. Look at that. Crazy. H  I love when these hatch out. Really light, really beautiful. Look at the red heads. Just  insanity. Love it. Love keeping them up. Uh these are really great little tortoises to keep because  as you can see they don't grow huge. They kind of stay a reasonable size. The um cherry heads stay  even smaller. Um we can show you guys the adults of them and that's that's kind of amazing too.  They they really are a beautiful little baby.

[00:05:51]They're hearty animals too. Redfoots. Um I'm  saying redfoots and cherry heads. They're the same. Cherry heads are basically a type of redfoot  uh subspecies that comes from certain areas of Brazil and even some in Bolivia. Um so there's  just they keep that red head. Some of them do not grow very large although Darth Maul is pretty big.  Uh and they are just overall my favorites because of the coloration. Here's one right here. Look at  this light color. Okay. But then they have this real contrast sometimes between light and dark on  their carropase. And they mostly have a very very dark character. Sorry to bug you. They also have  that elbow scale. You see that? That right on the inside of their elbow. Um they have that extra  scale which is really nice. Whereas, you know, you're not seeing too many of those with the red  foots. That this is just so cool. Look at that.

[00:06:43]Again, that's a hypo. That means that has reduced  black or no black in that animal. So that's really really cool. It's hypomelanistic. And then you  have, wait, is it hypo? Hyper hypo hypomelanistic.

[00:06:59]And if it's hyper, it's got a lot of black. Um,  very, very cool thing. Well, this guy seems to be more of a black cherry head. That's pretty cool.  Uh, call him charcoal. Uh, very cool. And so, um, these guys again, uh, just a beautiful species.  They live a long time. Uh, you can see some of them waking up here. There's our curly tails. We  have some of them wandering around right now. Um, we've done a lot of work to this area and for  the summer I allow the red foots to just wander uh this whole area because it becomes just really  really good. By the way, I think this is the one I think this is the female that has the hypo gene  because she's dark herself, but she does throw off some light babies and you can see that ring  around her eye. That's really beautiful eye right there. I don't know. She's the one I suspect is  uh doing the hypos, which is kind of amazing. And I see her all the time. She's been here for many,  many, many, many, many years. Uh we love her. So, we keep an eye on her. We keep her looking good.  Um as are all the others that are just kind of wandering around doing their thing out here. Um  this is pretty neat. Uh in another hour, what time is it here as we talk as I record this? It's late  afternoon. It's like 2:00. Um, in another hour when the temps go down a little bit more, a lot  of these tortoises are going to be out. And so, why are the red foots and cherry heads so cool?  They do this. They mow your lawn for you and you can pick them up easily and put them away. That  is awesome. So, if you live in an area where it gets cold, they are the tortoise that you can just  kind of pick up, grab uh uh easily if you start to get cold weather. So, that's important. Where  is your sculcatas and gops and alabas, big giant heavy tortoises uh that don't like the cold? You  can see here we've got some nesting. Uh so I'll wind up finding babies here or eggs. It's it's  amazing. But we do have the whole place dialed in.

[00:08:55]So babies can't really get out, which is nice.  But as you've seen in other videos, you know, we have uh elongated tortoises still popping up  on the property. So they're surprising us. Uh it's really really cool stuff. You know, they love to  hide during the hotter parts of the day. You can see here they are just spending some time uh in  the shade for a little while longer, which is nice uh because you can just kind of see all these  little microhabitats. And that's what you want to create in a smaller scale for the babies. You want  some leaf litter or spagnum moss. You want little plants and places where they can wedge into and  hide. They're looking for a microclimate. They're thermorreulating. they're trying to get out of  the hot sun and into a more humid environment.

[00:09:39]Humid environments while they're babies. Uh the  microclimates are very important so that they can grow those healthy shells. There's definitely  some there's definitely some data that says the humidity during early development of the shell  helps the shell to grow smooth so you don't get that pyramiding like the tortoise that was just  here a little while ago. I don't know where it went. Oh, there he is. She is rather. Is it a  he or she? Let's feel underneath. It's a he.

[00:10:03]When they grow up, you'll see it's a he because  check it out. You see that big long tail and then that deep concavity so that it can fit on top of  a female tortoise. So, there you have it. Now, let's go over here. We do have some Burmese star  tortoises. Uh they are obviously not redfoots, but they're cool nonetheless. And here's [ __ ]  He's uh he's been with me a couple of years now.

[00:10:26]This guy hatched out. You remember him? [ __ ] had  a [ __ ] in his chain. Uh he's a little goofy and wonky, but you know what? He eats. He poops, he  moves, so he can stay. Very cool. I like him. And we're growing him up and soon he'll be out here in  the crew. Uh we don't know, you know, this kind of deformity. You got to remember, lots of uh eggs  get laid from one female. Uh so you're bound to have an animal that probably isn't uh cosmetically  uh beautiful. Um but and and to be honest, most of the babies, what happens in 24 hours? The eggs get  raided and then if they are lucky enough to hatch, they get eaten in the first year pretty quickly.  So that's why reptiles as a strategy have so many babies because number one they feed the rest of  the environment and number two it's a survival strategy a species insurance policy. So we have  water that comes out sprays in here and collects in this water bowl. You see these shallow little  water dishes. Very important. We got some fluker hides. We got a terracotta roof uh shingle right  there that they go under. We have the really good repabar from fluker. They can burrow into it. And  then this whole thing is really really secure, friends. So you're not going to get any uh any  predators able to get in and do any damage, which again very very important. Importante. Yeah.  Cool. All right, moving along. We got the cherry heads. They're over here and they're just starting  to wake up as well. There's a male. I believe that's a male cherry head. Again, you can see this  habitat. We've got water. We've got eating rocks.

[00:11:56]So when they eat, they can wear down their beaks.  Very important. We got a hiding area in here. We have it on a thermostat for the winter. I've  got internet uh Bluetooth capable um Aquacape thermometers that are always communicating with  my phone so I know that things are going well.

[00:12:13]Thermostat obviously if the temperature gets  below 70 kicks on the heaters. So very very uh effective. And you know, to be honest,  friends, after a rainstorm, I have sometimes found baby cherry heads wandering around in here,  kind of just doing their thing. The cherry heads, we got about 13 of them, and we keep them in  this enclosure. Uh here's one roaming around, as I showed you earlier. We've got the traveler's  palm here. Here's another just kind of hanging out. That's one of our females. So, there's  plenty of places for these guys to just relax and enjoy the afternoon. We've got irrigation  that feeds the water. There's always a new watering uh water. There's like a fresh water  coming in is what I'm trying to say. Sometimes, friends, it's hard to talk. You know what I mean?  Like I just go I'm just rapping and uh you make mistakes sometimes. Anyway, uh there you have  it. Really beautiful little animal. So, redfoots, uh cherry heads, my friends. And how about this  rhino? Got to show a rhino when you bump into one.

[00:13:13]Hey, sure is hot inside of those rhinos. Hello,  Pebbles. There she is. Beautiful Pebbles. Okay, good to see you. I like to wander around and check  and make sure things are copathetic. Uh we went ahead a few years ago and we put up this little  mesh in case little babies try to fly the cube, they're not leaving. And the other cool thing  about cherry heads and red foots, aside from them being beautiful, is the fact that they come to  you. they get acclimated to you. They get really um inquisitive like most tortoises to be  honest. They want to just see what you're up to, what you're doing. Um and that's neat uh because  we have these animals to bond with. We want to share our lives with these animals. And when you  raise one up from a baby, it's just so rewarding to see it grow uh and to have an animal that  can stay with you for your entire life. That's amazing. All right. So, what I'm going to do is  I'm going to chop up some of this uh cactus and uh trim it up some of this mulberry leaf with our  scissors. And then, well, since I'm add something, I'm like, squirrel. Uh but anyway, we've got  hibiscus. I see a hibiscus. Let's pluck that. You know, let's get a couple of hibiscus leaves. Why  not? Little variety. That's one of the things you want to do. Variety is the spice of life. You also  want to feed them a good nutritious pelleted food like our Fluker. Our friends at Fluker make the  Fluker buffet blend tortoise blend which is really good. It's got squash, pepper, uh, and carrots in  it as well as the pellet. You can rehydrate it, get some hydration into these guys. Uh, so that's  really cool. Let's combine the new with the established little babies here. There we go. And  you can really see the variety on those shells.

[00:15:03]You can really really Oh, did I leave you there?  So, sorry. So, uh it's looking pretty good. So, like I said, I'm going to go ahead. We're  going to trim this up. Then, we'll put these corners back in. We'll get them fed and,  uh, we'll talk a little bit more about it.

[00:15:39]All right, everybody has been soaked. There are  the cherry heads. Here are the red foots. Let's go put them in. I'll show you what's happening inside  the enclosure. We've already got the [ __ ] and the others, the shell, the Burmese eating. They're  eating some of that malberry. We got water, fresh water just flowing. We got Dune hanging out. We've  got the rhino aiguanas hanging out. Everybody's chilling here. Let's go put our beautiful little  hypo in there. Let me get this in here. Actually, it' be easier for me just to get everybody out.  I just like to put them near the food. These guys will all figure it out eventually. They are not  missing many meals. Just put them in and let them do their thing. That's the best way to do it.  Oops. Sorry. Jeepers, creepers, canon, dropping things on babies. Yikes. Slippery hands. Let's go  ahead keep it moving. And it's okay if some of the food winds up kind of falling on the ground. Look  at this. Immediately upon putting some of them in, they just start eating. How cool is that? That's  how you know these are happy little babies.

[00:16:55]These guys just start eating as soon as they see  it. And the cactus is a really great way to get these guys uh their appetites going. Very,  very cool. Here's another baby eating right there. One of our brand new babies nibbling. But  you see how aggressive feeders the Burmese stars are. This one's eating right up on this. So,  we've got little feeding stations everywhere.

[00:17:24]Very, very good. There's our hypo. Hypo's eating  nicely. That's what we like to see. They love the cactus. Stimulates the appetite. They love the  hibiscus. They love that mulberry. So, it's very cool. Some of them like to hide, but you give them  what they want. Give the kids what they want and they will do their thing. They'll start showing  you what they need. I love it. Look at that.

[00:17:52]very very cool little tortoises. So, this is a  just a way for me to show you how I do things for my babies. I love setting them up in these  outdoor play pens. Um they do so well. This is uh this is our Burmese star for my friend Justin  at Miami Tortoise Gardens. He was generous enough to gift me one of those. I've always wanted these.  The rest were from Tom Crutchfield. Look at that.

[00:18:20]Beautiful animals. All right, everybody. There  you have it. Another fun video. Learning, that's good. Taking care of animals, even better. Uh,  don't forget to go to patreon.com/campkennon for more behindthescenes footage and live chats with  me every single Thursday, 400 p. p.m. Eastern. All right, I'm out of here. I'll talk to you guys  later. Hope you learned something. See you.