Husbandry of the Giants: Mary Cohen Interviews
Jeff Gee, of Captive Bred Wildlife Foundation

Giant tortoise from the Galapagos Islands Photograph by Sean Baker

Captive Bred Wildlife Foundation (CBWF) is located in southeastern Arizona. It is a breeding compound consisting of over 170 acres of high desert, grassland and hills at an elevation of about 4,600 feet. The area is a transition zone between the Chihuahuan Desert with the Sierra Madre Mountains to the southeast, and the Sonoran Desert with the Rocky Mountains to the northwest. Summer day temperatures are in the 90's and rarely exceed 100°F. Winter low temperatures are usually in the upper 30's, rarely in the 'teens; winter day temperatures are often 70°F. CBWF is devoted to "global conservation of wildlife through captive propagation." The goal of the facility is "to establish breeding groups of species whose wild population are under pressure." To this end, CBWF is actively involved in propagating various reptiles and amphibians. Jeff Gee, founder of CBWF, graciously agreed to take time out of his busy work schedule for this interview, which was conducted by telephone in late August 1994. He had just returned to the house from checking his rain gauge. August to October is the "monsoon season" in southeastern Arizona, and one inch of rain had fallen the night before.

Mary Cohen: How did you get into this unusual line of work?

Jeff Gee: I started keeping reptiles as pets 25 years ago. When I was 13, I worked at a pet shop cleaning cages for free. Over the years I worked at a number of pet shops. In 1978, with my mother, Janet Gee, as my partner, I opened a large retail pet store in Michigan specializing in reptiles. It was near Detroit, and Detroit is a nice city, but I just got tired of city life. I also got tired of the weather; there was only about one month a year when I could keep my tortoises outside. By 1990 I had been breeding reptiles for about 20 years, and it was time to move on from a retail pet shop to being a full-time reptile breeder. We sold the retail business in 1990 and I moved to Arizona.

I feel good about my work. I think reptiles are just now coming around to where fish and birds were ten to fifteen years ago. At that time, fish and birds were about 90% wild-caught and 10% captive-bred. Now it's just the opposite: 90% of those sold in the pet trade are captive-bred. During the next decade I think we will see the same trend with reptiles.

Mary Cohen: Given the 170-acre compound, what is the size of your staff?

Jeff Gee: Kim, my wife and partner, and I are the only full-time staff. We don't have other jobs. This is definitely a full-time job, but we like doing it. We have two part-time helpers, mostly for the mice and rats. We raise them to feed all of our snakes, and we also sell frozen rodents. It takes about an hour and a half a day just to clean the rodent cages and feed them.

Mary Cohen: Your operation is justifiably famous for its success with breeding the Galapagos tortoise (Geochelone nigra). How many adult tortoises do you have?

Jeff Gee: We have a total of ten adult Galapagos. Of the "domed" shell types, we have two females and four males currently breeding. There is also a "domed" male who came from the Detroit Zoo who lives here in retirement. We have a trio (2 males and 1 female) of "saddle-backed" tortoises on breeding loan from friends in Florida.

Mary Cohen: How are the saddle-backed tortoises doing?

Jeff Gee: They seem to be doing well. We got them on loan because in Florida, which is so much more humid than here, they were laying only infertile eggs. Our arid climate is more like the Galapagos Islands, and we hope this will result in fertile eggs. So far we've seen breeding behavior and mating going on but no eggs yet.

Mary Cohen: What is an average clutch size and incubation time for Galapagos tortoise eggs?

Jeff Gee: I have seen clutches from only a few eggs to over 15. I'd say 10 to 12 eggs is a typical clutch size, which seems low for such a huge animal. Sometimes the females lay 2 to 3 clutches in one year. The eggs are incubated at room temperature and usually hatch in 85 to 130 days.

Mary Cohen: What do you do to ensure breeding among your tortoises?

Jeff Gee: We try to pair up males and females of similar shell shape. We keep the male and female tortoises separated for part of the year. By splitting them up for a time and bringing them together during the breeding season, we find that the females are more responsive. If they are penned together year-round, the males are constantly trying to mate and the females are not cooperative. I think this is why some zoos have not had much success with breeding these giant tortoises. Giant tortoises are treated as exhibit animals and are kept together continually. The males try to mate daily and the females just lower their bodies, tuck in their tails and graze. We also feed them foods similar to those in the wild and we will occasionally change their diet to spark their interest. Of course, some good luck is also involved.

Mary Cohen: On the subject of food, how do you deal with feeding so many large animals?

Jeff Gee: In southeastern Arizona, we are lucky to have several species of prickly-pear (Opuntia) which are thornless making the pads easier to harvest. We have established about 200 plants although we really need 500. In the wild, Galapagos tortoises feed on cactus and native grasses. Here we try to simulate that diet, feeding them the cactus pads and fruit, as well as wild grasses and "weeds". They also get straw, which has almost no protein and is fed mainly for roughage. Alfalfa, which has some protein, is also given from time to time.

Because we don't have enough prickly pear established yet, we feed some supermarket produce trimmings, but these have to be carefully examined before feeding for pieces of plastic and other foreign material.

There is a watermelon farm nearby, and the tortoises love the stuff, but it is not very nutritious and is fed only as a treat. A pumpkin farm and an apple orchard nearby are also sources of occasional treats. Cactus pads and grasses are the mainstay of their diet.

It is no service to the animal to feed the wrong foods. Growth is not normal, the shell is bumpy and deformed and even the skeleton is affected.

Mary Cohen: How are the Galapagos tortoises housed?

Jeff Gee: They live in outdoor pens separated with gates. Local vegetation, such as mesquite and native grasses, grows in the pens. Each pen has a cement pond with a drain at the bottom. The tortoises enjoy soaking in the ponds. When the weather is really hot, we sprinkle the ground with water to make a mud bath. They also like to wallow in the mud. The pens are typically 50' x 100' (5,000 square feet) to 75' x 300' (22,500 square feet) in size. The fencing is metal fence panels as used for cattle and hogs. At night the tortoises sleep in plywood sheds. Each shed is about 5 feet tall, with an insulated metal roof and a small heater. The heater keeps the nighttime temperature at 82-84°F. We let them outside each day the temperature is in the mid-50's or warmer. Because they are so bulky and they are heated to 84°F, they don't lose much body heat even when the air temperature is so much lower than their own. They have to stay in their sheds during the day because the temperature is just too low outside for about 30 days out of the year.

Mary Cohen: How do you get them back to their sheds at the end of the day?

Jeff Gee: Well, you have to encourage them and you can't use force. We tickle their feet or the backs of their hind legs using what's called a show-stick in horse shows. The show-stick has a shaft ending in a hook which is not at all sharp. When they lift a foot, you just tickle it with the show-stick and they move. If they turn when you want them to move forward, you can place your foot right beside theirs, and they will turn away from your foot and continue forward.

Mary Cohen: Have you been able to identify the islands of origin of your Galapagos tortoises?

Jeff Gee: Documentation is difficult because record-keeping has been poor in the past. We know that some of our tortoises were hatched in captivity at the Honolulu Zoo, the Bermuda Aquarium and the San Diego Zoo. The babies we now have available are F2 captive-bred (i.e. second generation captive bred offspring).

Some of our tortoises were imported as a result of the 1928 Townsend expedition, the last time many tortoises were allowed to be imported from the Galapagos Islands. Many zoos have no collection data on their animals. We think that we have the subspecies Geochelone nigra guntheri, G. n. porteri and G. n. vicina.

DNA testing is being done on our tortoises and those of many zoos worldwide in an effort to identify their origins. Blood samples have been drawn and assessed for DNA content. These findings will be compared to the DNA of blood drawn from native tortoises in the Galapagos Islands. Early results have been inconclusive and the scientists are still searching for the key to identification of the bloodlines.

Mary Cohen: What do you mean by "bloodline"?

Jeff Gee: A separate and unrelated group of animals is what I call a bloodline, like the term "pedigree". Of course you can't always tell the exact origin of the genetic material, because female tortoises can retain viable sperm for years before laying fertile eggs.

Mary Cohen: How do you view the question of "inbreeding"?

Jeff Gee: I have a theory about this: I feel inbreeding occurs in nature. In many isolated areas, and on islands certainly, populations of animals stay in a specific area and interbreed freely. Natural selection culls the weak individuals. A case can be made that it is unnatural to always breed unrelated animals, because you are likely to be mixing gene pools.

Of course, in captivity, animals that are in some way deformed or not up to standards should not be allowed to breed. These individuals would probably not be able to reproduce in the wild.

Mary Cohen: CBWF breeds other types of turtles and tortoises also. What other species are you breeding?

Jeff Gee: We are working with several other tortoises. The African spurred tortoise (Geochelone sulcata) is one of the best suited for the desert because they're basically big gopher tortoises. We have a breeding colony of nine adults, three males and six females. Some were captive-bred and some were imported 8 or 9 years ago.

Leopard tortoises (Geochelone pardalis), native to the dry savannas of Africa, also do very well in this area. Our radiated tortoises (G. radiata) are doing well in Arizona, probably because their natural habitat is the dry scrub areas on Madagascar.

We also breed red-footed tortoises (Geochelone carbonaria) and we are establishing a group of yellow-footed tortoises (G. denticulata). These two species are native to South American forest areas and need much more water and humidity than the other tortoises we breed.

We are working on a colony of Aldabra tortoises (Geochelone gigantea), the other living species of giant tortoise. We currently have a trio and are working on acquiring more. Aldabra tortoises have not been bred to any great extent in captivity. We feel they will do well here because their natural habitat is dry scrub and grassland regions of the Aldabra-Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean. The Aldabra tortoise is not currently endangered in the wild and does not require the Fish & Wildlife permit to keep that is required for the Galapagos tortoise.

We are also looking for legally imported Indian star tortoises (Geochelone elegans). We would like begin breeding them based on our success with the radiated tortoises.

Mary Cohen: I understand you are also producing several unusual aquatic turtles. Please tell us about them.

Jeff Gee: We breed albino red-eared sliders, pastel sliders and several species of side-necked turtles. We are building a 6,000 square-foot reptile building to house all the snakes and, when it's finished, we plan to do a lot more with aquatic turtles.

Mary Cohen: How do you ensure having enough albino slider hatchlings to offer them on a regular basis?

Jeff Gee: We have several albino slider females whose offspring are 100% albino. We also have several heterozygous females which produce 25% albino offspring.

Mary Cohen: I think it's important to mention that a federal permit is required in order to transport an endangered animal, such as a Galapagos tortoise, across state lines.

Jeff Gee: The permit is issued by the United States Fish & Wildlife Service Office of Management Authority. The telephone number for the recording to request the permit application is (800) 358-2104. The application contains detailed information about applying for this permit.

This is not like a license where you fill out a form and pay a fee. The application is published in the Federal Register for public review. The applicant's experience seems to count the most in the evaluation of the application. It's difficult to get a permit unless you've kept the animal before or have extensive experience keeping similar animals. It is helpful to include in the application package letters of reference from friends, colleagues and veterinarians documenting your husbandry experience.

In closing, I would like to say that I am excited to see so many people now interested in keeping and breeding reptiles.

Originally published in the Tortuga Gazette 30(10): 1-4, October 1994