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The Zulu Project

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The Zulu Project

The Zulu Project Hermanns Tortoise Hatchery

07/19/2023

Happy Mandela Day!!! If you want to know the organization that is our motivation for The Zulu Project, please visit their page!

https://www.thebabyhouse.co.za/

We are proud to call them family and they could always use the help. Feel free, to donate through their page, even if you are not able to house a tortoise!

We are so happy to say that all 4 babies have found their forever homes and we saved the best for last! Our good friends adopted one of our babies! Congratulations Nate & Family! 😍

There are still 10 eggs in the incubator so stay tuned for updates! 🐢

06/22/2023

The original 3 plus 1 and a pig snout! 🐽🤣 These guys are are officially up for adoption!!!🐢 Please reach out for more info.

06/11/2023

These cute little chompers are enjoying some sow thistle this morning! These guys are almost ready to go to their forever homes! If you have any interest or questions about adding one to your home please don’t hesitate to send us a message. We have attached some tried and true products we love to get you started! 🐢

05/23/2023

Fresh weeds for Mama tonight! On the menu:
- dandelion leaf and flower
- clover
- plantain
I love this time of year strolling through the bush looking for fresh weeds for the tortoises! They love them and should be their main source in their diet. I guess I’m that type of hippy that wants the weeds to grow and to not be sprayed with chemicals. I use an app called tortoise table, which in the beginning, is super helpful to identify which weeds are safe!

05/21/2023

We are finally welcoming another baby! I’m a little confused for timing as this guy was laid in the very last clutch. There are eggs in the incubator a month longer than this one……🧐

05/20/2023

Morning breakie!

05/14/2023

Happy Mother’s Day beautiful Mama! 😍

04/28/2023

12 Eggies still cooking in the incubator! We are impatiently waiting for their arrival.

04/23/2023

Sunday cuteness!! 😍

04/22/2023

Who doesn’t love a morning hot tub party?!🤣

Tortoises mostly hydrate through their skin and shell by soaking. They rarely actually drink water. The warm water also stimulates motility for bowel movements so we change water often because of 💩 water! For hatchlings, warm daily soaks are especially important due to their small size they can become dehydrated quickly!

04/21/2023

We are so beyond excited to announce the arrival of our babies this week! 😍 Get ready for all the cuteness!!

I grew up in the country and around farms and loved every minute of it. There was no shortage of baby animals to snuggle. As a child, we specifically had two litters of puppies from our dog and my dad got baby ducks for us to raise! What a great experience for a child! Not only the work that went into caring for them but also to see it all happening first hand. I still have vivid memories of the ducks running towards our school bus when we got home quaking like crazy to greet us! Watching these tortoises hatch has been nothing short of a amazing!

The dream of mine to one day have baby tortoises felt just as that, a dream. Even though we had two that could mate and potentially have babies it seemed so far away against all odds. Tortoises don’t sexually mature typically until approximately 8 years old. Nolwazi, the Mama, is not quite 4…..So to say we weren’t expecting eggs is an understatement. That cold night on February 1st when we were getting the kids ready for bed we soon would be shocked out of our tree! As I was cleaning the water and tidying their enclosure I came across these white objects. I immediately made an assumption and said: “Ugh, you guys (kids) can’t put rocks in with the tortoises!” Wait a moment, there are……..ALEX!!!!! As I yell for my husband with urgency, he always comes running to my rescue prepared for whatever shenanigans seem to arise in our home! His eyes lit up! I’m in panic. I am a woman who likes plans, preparation, organization, time to process. Classic adoption mom here 🙋🏻‍♀️!!! I drove quickly to my brothers house to gather an incubator I knew he had from a duck egg the previous year.

The next think you know we are incubating 5 Hermanns Tortoise eggs! A month later 7 more arrived. Ok we need a bigger incubator! A month after that another clutch arrived with 4 more……😳 Ok, we are in over our heads. Luckily Alex and I do perseverance under pressure well, it’s our specialty!

Please welcome our first three hatchlings!!!❤️🐢

04/20/2023

Our Story:

We are an animal loving freaks family! There are many non-human members in our home we call family but this project is near and dear to our heart.

It all started in August 2019, my son’s 5th birthday! My husband and I wanted to get him a pet of his very own. By this point he had become CEO of the animal loving freaks family! He was obsessed with everything animals, especially the exotic ones. He remembered facts, names, locations and everything else you could imagine! As adults we even learned everything from Narwhals to Pangolins and beyond!! He would carry around his tattered animal encyclopedia books everywhere we went like they were a baby blanket. Of course, we were thrilled! Here comes the but……he has significant asthma and allergies.😢 We knew we would be very limited and I wasn’t about to let a snake or fast gecko in my house!

We loved to explore the warm humid aquariums and pet shops in the midst of our arctic -30C winter months here in Canada.🇨🇦 It seemed to just feed the soul and we loved watching the fish, it was so relaxing! One of these days exploring we seen some baby tortoises. We’ve never seen anything like this before in a pet store and I knew when I looked at my husband and he looked back with a smirk, we had found our next family member! It was slow, no slime, no filters or mess. It was perfect! 👌

We researched for months, making sure this was the right pet for our son and realistic for our lifestyle. Everything checked the boxes for us so we started collecting several husbandry items to create the little ones home! We secretly hid everything and stashed it away for the ultimate surprise!

Three years later our daughter had also come home to our family and was also given the gift of her very own tortoise!

The Zulu Project was established in 2019 in hopes we would one day have our very own little tortoise ranch! 😍 Why The Zulu Project? Both of our children completed our family through adoption from South Africa. 🇿🇦 They are both of Zulu descent and heritage and we are so proud! Our goal is to donate a portion of the proceeds to Westville Baby House, where our children were loved and cared for for the first year of their life. Our hopes is to honour those beautiful people and continue to allow future babies of the home receive the love and care they need before they are welcomed by their forever families!

Meet the Parents: 🐢

The Mom- Nolwazi (In Zulu means “mother of knowledge”)
The Dad- Nkanyezi (in Zulu means “shining star”)

Address

Edmonton, AB

Website

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