Building a habitat for a sulcata

[magoo]

Well, this weekend we are moving into a new place with a huge yard and garden. Magoo has spent the winter inside, with UV and night lamps.

He's been mainly confined to the kitchen area, with the occassional trip to the park across the road or into his outside "pen" when it's warm enough.

However, I am hoping that once we are settled into the new place, I will be able to build some sort of fencing (not too expensive) to make him a very good sized area for him to play in. He has a doghouse which will compose his overnight shelter, so that shouldn't be a problem.

I don't want to use wire-link if possible, but may have to - i don't have the time to construct hundreds of feet of solid wood fencing.

His pen at the moment is about 8*8 feet, and is really a little too small for him - although better than the kitchen!
His space in the new garden will be limited only by the length of fence I can build for him, so am hoping to get him at at least 1000 square feet.

Photos to come!

[magoo]

Photos as promised!
The pen is not yet complete, but the outside is about 80% finished. I ran out of material and will have to go buy some more this week.

We ended up going for "chicken wire" in the end - at least it is vinyl coated and not the really cheap and nasty bare metal stuff!

This photo shows the pen from the top left corner - just as you walk down the steps at the side of the house.
The pen "wraps round" 5 trees in total - 4 of which are visible here - the fifth is to the top right of his pen - a big pine tree!

[magoo]

This photo is taken further down the garden. You can almost see the pine tree I mentioned at the top left of the photo.

You can also see the door leading to the "basement room" that I am going to run the power line from for his heater.

[magoo]

In this photo, you can see all 5 trees that I wrapped the fence around. This was taken at about 3pm, so you can see that there is a good amount of sunny area for him, and also (just as important), shady areas for him to cool down in.

[magoo]

This is the bottom corner of his pen - I could have taken the easy way out and nailed the fence to the inner side of the tree, but I wanted to give him the bush to play in and for extra interest and shade, so I went around the outside.

The wood at the bottom of the fence is used to hold the bottom tight to the ground (in this photo it is just loose - I need to buy more stakes to hold the wood down)

[magoo]

The wire is attached to the metal posts in 2 ways. Firstly, the posts come with 4 small "Tabs" that the wire can be snagged to. These hold pretty well, but for added security I used wire ties as well.

The metal posts I got from Home Depot - I think they are about $3 each. The chicken wire is is about $17 for 25 feet and I think we needed about 8 rolls of it.

The metal posts are hammered pretty deep into the ground - they also have a "spade" type plate welded near the bottom for extra stability, so it will be virtually impossible to push the posts over

[magoo]

The following images all show how I have secured the base of the fence. Basically, I just bought long wood strips and anchored them into the ground using "tent" stakes.
This works fairly well - the bottom of the fence has 4 or 5 inches of overlap that I bent out (away from the inside of his pen), and laid the wood as flat as possible on top of the fence and hammered the stakes in.

The stakes have folded tops, so even if Magoo pushes onto the fence, the wood will push against the back of the stake and stay in place (at least that's the theory).

The stakes are about 7 or 8 inches long, but the ground is a little soft, so they are not as secure as I'd like. I'll just monitor the situation when Magoo gets in there, and if it looks like they are not going to hold, I will make some longer ones out of steel rod or something...

[magoo]

Some more images of his new "home to be"

All images can be seen together here:  http://www.fatmagoo.com/photos/public/album/Magoo%20Pen/index.html

[tiffy11]

Hey, I love what you've done so far - I have a couple of baby torts aswell, so I'll be popping back now and again to pinch ideas.
I have hermanns though - dont get anywhere near as big as a sulcata.