My female is trying to mount my male

[navarro4774]

Before you ask i am very sure she is a female and he is a male. for the past few day she has chased him bucked him and gotten on top of him and to my eyes it looks like she dose what he dose to her when he wants to mate with her. is this normal? and they are 2 greeks

 

[Yvonne G]

Sometimes a female will do this when she's ready to lay eggs.

 

[navarro4774]

so what do i do

 

[Levi the Leopard]

Do you only have the 2? Are they housed together?

It could be that she is dominant and mounts him to bully him out of her territory.
I can't help on what to do if she needs to lay eggs but if she's just dominant, my advice is to separate them and let them live in their own enclosures.

 

[navarro4774]

well the live in an out door enclosure that is 10 ft by 4.5ft. If it is laying eggs what time of day would she normally them.

 

[Tom]

They can lay at anytime of day.

These tortoises need to be separated. That is no way for the male to live and if the female does not lay her eggs because she is concerned about the male who refuses to leave her territory, she could become egg bound and die. Tortoises should not be kept in pairs in most cases, and yours is one more example of why. Time for a new enclosure for the male.

 

[tglazie]

She may not even have eggs. Past sources often portray male tortoises as the villains and females as the helpless damsels in distress, but this is simply not accurate. Tortoises of the genus Testudo can be aggressive jerks regardless of gender, and as a result, they are best maintained in isolation.

If, however, she does have eggs, then Tom is absolutely correct. She may not lay in the presence of the male, which would be a serious problem. In my experience, tortoises just don't do well in groups. I used to keep my marginated torts together when they were younger, and even in the juvenile stage, they would engage in bullying or other passive aggressive behavior (like sitting on the food pile and refusing to allow the others food, or if I fed them separately, having the dominant one move to another's food pile to quickly devour it before returning to his/her own food pile; refusing to share a shelter or allow the lesser animal access to one of many shelters; biting and shoving over the best basking spots during the morning hours). Apparently some tortoises do better in groups (my uncle keeps his redfoots in a big group in a yard sized enclosure in Florida, and he says he never has a problem), but Greeks, Hermanns, Marginateds, and Russians... they're all just jerks to each other and require solitude to thrive. I noticed that as soon as I separated all of my torts, even the hatchlings, they did much better.

T.G.

 

[Brunurupucis]

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