By Tyler Brooks
The captive care of the Home’s Hingeback Tortoise, Kinixys homeana, is something that is not discussed enough. Hopefully, by the end of this article, you will be interested in the care and husbandry of this interesting species as much as we are at The Kinixys Working Group. Below, I will discuss the natural history, husbandry and reproduction of Kinixys homeana.
NATURAL HISTORY
The Home’s Hingeback Tortoise was described by Thomas Bell in 1827 and named in honor of Everard Home, British surgeon and Naturalist. Kinixys homeana are a small to medium-sized tortoise from equatorial West Africa. They have been found in Ghana, Gabon, Guinea, DRC, Benin, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Equatorial New Guinea, and Nigeria. In their natural range, these tortoises will inhabit dense forest, lowland jungles, and seasonally flooded swampy areas adjacent to larger bodies of water.
CAPTIVE HUSBANDRY
Enclosures
Taking what we know about Kinixys homeana in the wild and applying it to a captive situation can be difficult. Being successful with this species takes patience and the ability to set up their habitat correctly. They are shy, crepuscular, and stay hidden most of the day, but that being said, they can be very rewarding for the keeper (you) when given the opportunity to exhibit natural behaviors.
As juveniles (under a year old), the Home’s Hingeback Tortoise should be housed in a closed chamber enclosure – any enclosure that can hold and maintain humidity. This can be easily achieved by using PVC caging with sliding glass front doors with minimal ventilation. These are ideal with the only drawback being price. Young Hingebacks thrive in smaller controlled environments. To accomplish this, we have developed the “Tort Port”. These modular enclosure windows allow the keeper to utilize any size bin as an enclosed chamber habitat.
Once you have decided what type of enclosure to use, build the enclosure from the ground up. Substrate is very important, as Hingebacks spend hours digging and nosing through their substrate looking for worms and bugs. For hatchlings, I prefer to use fir bark nuggets, although coco husk chunks and cypress mulch will work as well. I recommend introducing isopods, springtails, and any other “cleaner” that can also be used as forage. These additions are essential to the natural diet and behavior of Kinixys homeana, and help support a bioactive environment.
The next step is to add live plants such as Pothos or Wandering Jew. I also utilize sticks and branches to give sight breaks, as well as hides or retreats where the tortoise can go to feel secure. At this stage of their lives, I do not add a water dish to the enclosure to avoid the unnecessary risk of an overturned hatchling. Instead, they are soaked every other day under full spectrum UV lighting to address hydration and vitamin d3 synthesis.
As the tortoise grows, I will set the animal up in a bigger version of what has been described above with a few changes. I will add a shallow water dish, preferably with ramp out (plant water dishes are cheap and easy to clean) and UV lighting. Typically, I upgrade to a 110 quart bin, which allows me to safely add the lights. I have found that Arcadia’s “Shade Dweller PRO” works best in this situation as it is only 12” long and as the name suggests, it is not an overpowering light for the tortoise. These lights seem to be perfect for the species.
As Kinixys homeana reach five to seven years old, they are ready for their adult enclosure. I utilize different size cattle troughs. A single Hingeback can be kept in a 6’ trough and will do even better in an 8’ trough. The major change in the adult habitat is the substrate, aside from it being open air. For adult females that I want to breed, I use 10” of shredded coco husk topped with 2” of coco husk chunks. The chunked topper helps keep your water dish clean and will also assist the tortoise in walking properly by providing solid footing. Adult males get several inches of coco husk or cypress mulch as substrate. Additionally, both male and female troughs get a layer of leaves, typically Magnolia. Naturally, Kinixys homeana seem to really enjoy leaf litter, and it brings out a lot of their natural burrowing behaviors. Other than substrate, adult housing is similar to the baby habitats. They both want low lighting and lots of hides. Adults of both sexes relish a good soak, so make sure that you always provide the correct size water dish.
Diet
Kinixys homeana enjoy a highly varied diet. In the wild, chitin from the exoskeleton of millipedes is found in most stool samples. It seems that millipedes are an important item in their diet, so in captivity it is important to use many forms of protein to round out their diet. Different forms of protein can include rodents, chicks, earthworms, boiled eggs, and assorted invertebrates. I offer one of the above items to babies at least once or twice a week, depending on what is available, and to adults typically once a week.
As for the vegetable side of the equation, my base salad features dark leafy greens. In the Southeast United States, we have relatively cheap, year-round access to collards, turnips, mustard greens, and kale. These greens are good for a store-bought diet, but if you have the ability to collect weeds like dandelion, clover, plantain or mallow, it is preferable. Next, I prepare a topper to the greens that includes zucchini, yellow squash, mushrooms and sweet potato. I microwave the sweet potato until it is the consistency of a zucchini or yellow squash (cooked but still firm). In addition to these common items, I will add okra, green beans, carrot and various assorted squashes. These items are added as I see fit or when they are seasonally available.
As you can see, I am not using true fruit in their daily diet. If you are trying to establish wild caught adults, it will be tempting to use fruit when acclimating them, but this should be avoided as the high sugar content of fruit will lead to avoidable gut flora problems in the future.
In addition to natural food items, I use pellets every seven to ten days. I utilize a variety at my facility: Mazuri Tortoise (5M21), Mazuri Crocodilian (5MG1), Marion Zoological Tortoise (MRFT B25) and ZooMed Aquatic Turtle (3/16” Growth Formula). Before feeding, I will soak the pellets that I am going to use in water and prep a salad that is pretty basic. Next, I will combine the pellets and salad on the plate being fed out. I let the pellets be the star of the show on these days. I do add supplements to their salads once a week, alternating between Repashy Calcium Plus, Repashy Calcium Plus LoD and Arcadia EarthProA. I provide adult females more supplementation during the breeding season. I strive to provide a highly varied diet to best support these amazing tortoises throughout their lives.
REPRODUCTION
If you choose to work with Kinixys homeana, I strongly suggest that you consider trying to breed them. These tortoises are not doing well in their home range due to many factors such as habitat loss, traditional medicine and human consumption, just to name a few. Added to these external pressures, Kinixys homeana do not lay large clutches. In my experience an average clutch size is two to four eggs with one to three clutches laid per year. In October, as the temperature is changing, I start to pair my Hingebacks. I use the change in seasons to help facilitate breeding. The storms that come through in October are a great time to start your pairings as the barometric pressure drop seems to stimulate breeding. First, I remove the food and water dish from the male’s enclosure. Next, I introduce the female and I use a garden hose on a shower setting to simulate heavy rain. I keep an eye on the pair when they are together to make sure the male isn’t flipped and that courting doesn’t get too violent. Kinixys, as a genus, can be rather aggressive during mating rituals, so some combat is to be expected. It is important to pair aggressively and often during this time to ensure the best chance at fertile eggs. I continue to pair until the female rejects the male. In most cases, she will become much more aggressive towards him.
As the female gets close to laying, she will become very restless, constantly pacing and roaming her space to find the right nesting spot. If your female goes through all of these stages and then stops pacing, it is time to search the enclosure for eggs. Kinixys homeana are shallow nesters, so be very cautious when turning the soil looking for eggs. It is important to be observant with the tortoises as you don’t have some of the advantages that you have with snakes and lizards, like sheds and swelling that can be good indicators that things are progressing in the way you want them to.
I have had success in hatching Kinixys homeana eggs utilizing passive ambient incubation, meaning that I do not use a traditional incubator. I use a Squamata Concepts SIM container with water in the bottom and I put the box on a shelf in my tortoise building to experience the temperature fluctuations. This time of year the eggs will be exposed to temperatures between mid to low 70s up to the low 80s. I caught a late second clutch of two eggs being laid on July 9th, 2020 – one of these eggs was very large and went bad quickly, while the other went full term in the SIM container and hatched on October 12th, 2020. It is not a traditional incubation method, but this is what has worked for me.
CALL TO ACTION
If you are remotely interested in working with Kinixys homeana or any other Kinixys species, I highly encourage you to seek out the Kinixys Working Group. We are a collaborative of dedicated Hingeback tortoise enthusiasts, keepers, institutions and researchers working together to ensure the future of the genus to the best of our ability. To accomplish this mission, the working group will preserve Kinixys, educate those interested in the genus and support sound research. You do not need to be a keeper in order to help the genus – there are multiple opportunities to educate, promote and bolster these amazing animals. Kinixys homeana have taught me patience, endurance and humility. I encourage anyone wanting a challenge to consider these unique tortoises for your program. If you choose to do so, you will be greatly rewarded in your endeavor.
