Bored Tortoise

DaisyTheTortoise

New Member
Joined
Nov 20, 2019
Messages
1
Location (City and/or State)
Savannah Georgia
Help! My Russian tortoise, Daisy won't stop scraping against the walls and its driving me crazy. She has a 6ftx5ft enclosure with opaque walls. I put logs and other items she likes to climb on in her enclosure, mounds for her to dig in, areas for her to hide, balls for her to push and i sometimes hide treats for her to find but she still scrapes against the wall for a good portion of the day. I even let her outside in my backyard for a few hours at a time here and there. I don't know what else to do to entertain her. Why must she do this all day? It kills me.
 

Yvonne G

Old Timer
TFO Admin
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Jan 23, 2008
Messages
93,388
Location (City and/or State)
Clovis, CA
Russian tortoises really don't take well to being cooped up. And once you've shown them there's more to the world than what's inside their four walls (out of the enclosure, either outside or on the floor of your house), they're never happy to be contained in their enclosure again.

I'm afraid your only respite is to build a large, safe outdoor enclosure for this animal and let it live outside. Building enclosures can be very rewarding. It's quite fun to 'decorate' and plant a new enclosure. And if your neck of the woods has cold winters, the tortoise can brumate, making it unnecessary to ever keep it indoors again.

The key words here are "build it a large, safe outdoor enclosure." This doesn't mean turn the animal loose in the backyard, because if you do, you soon will be tortoiseless. They are escape artists.
 
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