Care Sheets

Well I'm glad to say things have change for the better, here at Zoological International breeding and research we have been rearing groups of captive bred individuals for over 2 decades to form groups of mature breeding adults producing stunning quality UK bred babies.

With first hand knowledge we have found genuine UK bred babies are no more difficult to keep than any other commonly kept tortoises, the only difference is that they don't hibernate like the more commonly kept Mediterranean species.

It's been long thought that Indian Star tortoises need to be kept excessively hot all year round, in fact our first group of adults back in the 90's were kept like this and never bred. It was only by chance that one of our males escaped from an out side pen during a hot summers day and was found the following year after being exposed by the UK weather over winter and was found to be in remarkably good health that I had to rethink temperatures. After researching weather station data in the Deccan Plateau region I found that day/night temperature were so much lower than I expected.

The Deccan Plateau in Southern India stands at an average elevation of 920m or 3,020ft and has two main seasons. From December through to March is the drier season with little rain full, from April the rains become more frequent but the wettest months are from August to October with heavy monsoon rains occurs during the late afternoon through to early hours of the morning with little or no rain during the mornings to midday. A total of 900mm+ of rain fall per year is recorded.

The Deccan Plateau enjoys a pleasant and equable climate through out the year due to its elevation, not to hot or to cold but has a relatively high humidity due to the rain fall. Day Temperatures seem to be fairly stable from June trough to February averaging 28c and night temps down to between 20c but can drop to as low as 15c in December and January. Day temperatures then spike to an average of 33c+ in March April May with night temps still dropping to around 20-22c

These lower day and night temperatures with even lower night temperature in December and January were the key factor in the reproductive behaviour of the adults, since then we have successfully been breeding Indian Stars every year without any problems and seem just as easy to breed as any other species.