# Scratching at walls



## lskaife (Jan 2, 2016)

hi there my Russian is scratching at his walls of his wood home, and it's very loud and disturbing to the rest of my family. He has 6 inches to burrow in...basking light 97-100 F cool end 70..at night drops to 63-64...is there anything I can do to make the walls less loud like applying a tarp or something?


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## SarahChelonoidis (Jan 2, 2016)

I'm not a Russian keeper so take my advice with a grain of salt, but I have two suggestions.
1) A larger enclosure will help. Excess wall digging is sometime a symptom of keeping a tortoise in too small a space.
2) Coco liner on the walls is softer to dig against than wood. On my non-plexiglass walls I have coco liner over top of the pond liner (over top of the wood) and have had minimal scrambling against it since I put it in. I originally bought it to help hold humidity in and as a vertical substrate for plants, but it also doesn't seem to entice aimless digging like the pond liner did. It's also quite tough stuff so could take some serious tortoise abuse too. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004MAOL0Y/?tag=exoticpetnetw-20


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## yillt (Jan 2, 2016)

Can he see over the top? I found that with higher walls, there is less scratching as they give up on trying to escape. By your profile photos I can see just the edge of a tortoise table and it looks rather low compared to his shell. But I may be mistaken. Please could I see a picture of his set up


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## lskaife (Jan 2, 2016)

How did you tack it down??


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## SarahChelonoidis (Jan 2, 2016)

lskaife said:


> How did you tack it down??



Heavy duty staple gun.


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## lskaife (Jan 2, 2016)

Walls are high


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## SarahChelonoidis (Jan 2, 2016)

lskaife said:


> Walls are high




Those tortoise houses are much too small for an active, adult tortoise. 4'x8' is the enclosure size commonly recommended here for adult Russians to be housed in.


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## Yvonne G (Jan 2, 2016)

lskaife said:


> hi there my Russian is scratching at his walls of his wood home, and it's very loud and disturbing to the rest of my family. He has 6 inches to burrow in...basking light 97-100 F cool end 70..at night drops to 63-64...is there anything I can do to make the walls less loud like applying a tarp or something?



He's not scratching to dig a hiding place, he's trying to escape. There's something wrong with his habitat...probably too small. Because of where Russian tortoises come from, they are hard-wired to wander over great distances looking for food. Even though you are now providing the food, he still has the urge to wander. Something he can't do in a small habitat. Be thinking about making a safe outdoor habitat for when the weather warms up, then you can let him hibernate in the winter and you won't be bothered by the scratching. (You're not alone here. That's what Russians do when kept indoors)


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## Gillian M (Jan 2, 2016)

I've a strong feeling your tort is trying to escape. He's most probably not feeling "at home" in that enclosure. (Sorry, I don't mean to be hurtful). Don't forget that torts are used to living in the wild, where they wander around freely *without* boundaries, borders, red lights.


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