About

About Us

Cosy Tortoises is a family run business that specialises in tortoise housing and care. We began the business 16 years ago as a second job whilst looking after our young children.

Our interest in tortoises began many years before when we had pet tortoises ourselves. When we met and developed our hobby there was very little satisfactory housing available. So, we began the trial and error process of developing and adapting our own housing set-ups. We found cold-frames too small and the glass thermally inefficient. Polycarbonate greenhouses were warmer but too large and cost a fortune to keep warm enough for our Redfoot tortoises through the winter. The All-Season House was the answer for our drier cold-tolerant species and the Natural Ground Houses for our Redfoot tortoises, who need a much more constant background temperature and higher humidity all of the time.

We hope you enjoy browsing our website and can find all of the information you need to make your tortoises as cosy and healthy as ours!

If you have any Special needs or accessibility issues regarding our website, products or services, please inform us and we will be happy to make any reasonable adjustments you require.

Cosy Tortoises will always endeavour to keep our tortoise website a personal, friendly service. Please see below for details of how we source and select all of our materials, paint and packaging as well as how we deal with and minimise our waste. Details of how we keep our products environmentally friendly are on the individual product pages, specifically how we keep them thermally efficient to keep your electric bills low.

Thank-you for taking the time to read About us,

Russell and Anne-Louise Maynard

This is how we keep our Designs, Manufacturing, Waste Management and Packaging as environmentally friendly as possible.

Environmentally Friendly Design

How each of our tortoise house designs keep your energy costs down is detailed on the individual product pages.

Generally speaking our houses are well-insulated and kept to minimum sizes appropriate for species sizes and cleaning practicalities. This means that the energy required to run heatlamps outside, is kept to a minimum when used with a good quality dimmer thermostat (which should protect against over-heating with appropriate use of our side vents). Often in warm weather our thermostats turn our heatlamps off completely. When the weather is cool enough to keep the tortoises inside the house overnight by closing the tortoise door, the heatlamps will be turned down by the thermostat. Together, the thermostats and our Insulated Houses will save you a small fortune in energy costs.

Manufacturing

Cosy Tortoises source all of our wood including our plywood from sustainably well-managed forests certified by the FSC and PEFC grading codes, that are similar to Fairtrade certification, but for wood.

The insulation we use is made from aluminium foil and a very thin plastic layer which keeps our insulation minimal but effective whilst allowing good ventilation between layers to ensure moisture travels out of the walls rather than trapping it within.

Prior to manufacturing all of our wood is untreated so there are no un-neccesary chemical treatments often used with outdoor products. This means there will be no leaching of chemicals into the ground when the wood is rained on.

All of the finished products are treated with low-VOC (Volatile Organic Compounds) paint or stain that minimises the impact of sealing and protecting the wood so that is lasts well. VOCs - Volatile Organic Compounds are the scientific name for solvent chemicals that evaporate into gases in the air around us. Our personal rule of thumb is, if you can smell solvents then you are breathing them! Personally we think protecting our tortoises from chemicals of any description is the only way. Thankfully, there are now fantastic quality wood stain and garden paints that protects wood for years as well as being low in solvents and safe for pets when they are dry.

Waste Management

Most of our wood waste goes to people who re-use the cuttings recreationally or as wonky kindling for wood-burning stoves. The remainder goes to a local waste management facility that sends wood waste to be chipped as a start product for many types of recycled timber-boards.

Most of our metal waste, all waste paper, cardboard and formed plastic packaging is recycled at our local waste management facility as well.

Separating our waste in the above ways ensures that we keep our landfill waste to a minimum.

Packaging

We source most of our packaging locally. All of our cardboard is at least second-hand for our wood-based products, because we re-use packaging of materials delivered to us. Envelopes and Labels are all recyclable and mostly made with recycled material. We also collect used boxes by agreement from local businesses helping to increase their eco-credentials too!