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Tortoise-Specific Books:
Title: Practical Encyclopedia of Keeping and Breeding Tortoises and Freshwater Turtles
Author: A.C. Highfield
Publisher: Carapace Press
Date Published: 1996
ISBN: 1-873943-06-7
This book contains a lot of valuable information about tortoise care, feeding, and breeding. However, the reason that I strongly recommend buying it is the wealth of veterinary information in it. Highfield discusses common and not-so-common bacterial and viral illnesses, injuries, and other health problems, and provides specific information on how to treat such problems. If your tortoise has a health emergency and you cannot find a reptile vet near you, I strongly suggest taking this book to the vet who is treating your tort and making sure that he/she follows the recommendations given in the book for appropriate treatment regimes, drugs, and dosages. You just may save the life of your tortoise!
Title: The Official Tortoise Trust Guide to Tortoises & Turtles
Author: A.C. Highfield
Publisher: Carapace Press
Date Published:
ISBN: 1-873943-01-6
From the Carapace Press website description:
The new edition of this excellent guide covers keeping tortoises and terrapins in an easy to read, accessible manner without being short on facts! Ideal for the newcomer to the subject. Recommended as "the best general introduction to the topic by far". Well illustrated and an invaluable addition to any tortoise enthusiast's bookshelf.
Title: The Care and Breeding of the African Spurred Tortoise Geochelone sulcata
Authors: Richard and Robyn Wilson
Publisher: Carapace Press
Date Published: 1997
ISBN: 1-873943 -51-2
From the Carapace Press website description:
An excellent practical handbook on keeping and breeding this large and impressive tortoise. Comprehensive information on diet, outdoor and indoor housing, distribution, behavior and much more.
We do have one problem with this book: we encourage people to avoid breeding their sulcata tortoises, because they are rapidly becoming "disposable pets." Rehoming sulcata tortoises is not easy as they become larger than most people can easily deal with; therefore, overwhelmed owners have been known to dump their tortoises in the wild. We strongly discourage this practice, and hope that responsible owners will agree with our point by not breeding their tortoises.
Other useful books:
The following books are not specifically tortoise-focused, but they are very helpful for the tortoise owner. We bought our copies of these books at the Borders Books, Music, and Cafe store in Albuquerque, New Mexico. You should be able to have your local bookstore order these for you:
Title: Weeds of the West
Authors: Whitson, Burrill, Dewey, Cudney, Nelson, Lee, & Parker
Publisher: Western Society of Weed Science,
P.O. Box 963, Newark, CA 94560
ISBN: 0-941570-13-4
We HIGHLY recommend this book to tortoise keepers, gardeners, hikers, and pretty much everyone who lives, works, or plays in the western United States. Virtually all of the weeds that exist in the western United States are in this book, along with color photographs and information about them, including whether or not they are toxic to livestock (keep in mind that the Society of Weed Science is a farming and ranching-related research entity, so they have cattle, sheep, and horses -- not tortoises -- in mind when discussing toxicities of various plants).
The only drawback to this book is that it's arranged by plant family, rather than alphabetically by plant name, so it can get a bit difficult to identify a specific plant. We frequently end up flipping through the whole book, comparing the book's photographs to the actual plant in front of us, until we find the plant in question. But we always DO manage to find the plant in this book, so you know it's complete.
Title: The New Complete Book of Food: A Nutritional, Medical, and Culinary Guide
Author: Carol Ann Rinzler
Publisher: Facts on File, Inc.
Date Published: 1999
ISBN: 0-8160-3987-9
From the book's back cover:
"Food sustains life and satisfies the appetite, yet there is much mystery and controversy surrounding it. The New Complete Book of Food uncovers the medical and physical properties of food, the benefits and hidden dangers, how various types of food change when processed or cooked, and much, much more."
Although this book was written with human nutritional needs in mind, it really is helpful for tortoise owners -- for each food item, the book provides the following information:
-- A nutritional profile and a detailed guide to its nutrients
-- The most nutritious ways to serve it
-- Whether a food should be avoided by those on certain types of diets
-- What to look for when buying the food item
-- How to store it, prepare it, and what happens when you cook it
-- Medical uses and/or benefits of the food item, and how it interacts with medication
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