What Trot the tortoise does all winter.... Hibernation adventures!

This blog has been a few weeks coming....  I've finally got around to it.

We have a Tortoise.  His name is Trot.  He is almost 5 years old.  And every year he spends a couple of months in the winter hibernating.  This isn't a straight forward process.  It takes a lot of preparation and planning.  He hibernates in a refridgerator (not one that we use for food) and it has to be temperature regulated to be kept at around 5 degrees celcius, give or take a degree.  Each day we have to check that he hasn't had a wee, we don't want dehydration, and then each week we weigh him to make sure he isn't loosing too much mass.  This is all recorded and monitored closely.

Trot managed 9 weeks this year.  He could have probably done an extra week or two as he only lost a tiny bit of weight, but he is still fairly young.  Here are a few images to show his hibernation adventure......

Trot's home for the winter.

This is how he sleeps....  In an ice cream tub lined with soil from his housing.

After his first week he has lost one gram in weight.

Towards the end of his hibernation he has only lost 6 grams, he's done great.  Miles likes to help out when we monitor.

Here's his record for this year.  The 162g at the bottom is the weight he could get to before coming out of hibernation.
As you can see he got nowhere near and held his body mass brilliantly!

The day has come to start warming him up again.  He stays in his box at room temperature until his eyes open,
which usually takes about half an hour.

His eyes are open!  Welcome back to civilisation Trot. :)

Once he starts stretching and moving, a nice warm bath encourages him to get his appetite back and hydrate.

A nice welcoming meal of weeds and dried flowers.  He's ready for this...

Chomping away....

Thanks for looking ~ Fleur x