Tortoise Digging At Walls

[bezthehee]

Hi everyone,
For a while my russian tort who is around 4 and a female has been digging at the walls. She used to do this in the past but usually after upgrading her past enclosures she would be okay.
A couple of weeks ago she started doing it again in her IKEA bookshelf enclosure (inspired by the post from this sub) with shower curtains. So I decided to upgrade it again and since my space was limited, I just bought a second bigger bookshelf and made a makeshift ramp between the two. At first I was very happy with the way it came out but after putting my tort in it she started doing the same exact thing. I gave her some time hoping that it was all due to the changes, but it’s been weeks now and she’s still doing it even though she moves between the levels.
I’ve payed attention to her behavior and noticed she has two modes: one is the wall scratching behavior and the other is she will sleep in her hide most of the day and maybe come out to bask once or twice while generally staying in the same area. The second behavior only happens after I feed her dry pellets and she eats a good bit of them. I’ve tried giving her a lot of greens before to see if it has the same affect but usually she will just eat a good bit and then go back to digging at the walls.
The size of her enclosure is 93x31 downstairs and 73x31 upstairs. Heat and uvb is measured and okay. The substrate upstairs is shallow but downstairs she has deep areas where she can burrow. I plan to add more substrate soon.
Any help or ideas is appreciated!

 

[danii1207]

Any luck?

 

[Littleredfootbigredheart]

Any luck?

This thread is quite old now so op might not reply

 

[danii1207]

This thread is quite old now so op might not reply

No I know just chancing it

 

[Littleredfootbigredheart]

No I know just chancing it

Fair enough, would be nice to see an update

 

[bezthehee]

No I know just chancing it

@danii1207 @Littleredfootbigredheart

Sorry guys I forgot about this thread. But yes! So I tried a couple of different solutions over the time I made this post, but I narrowed it down to these two:

1- Items in enclosure: So even though the enclosure itself was big (at least bigger than the minimum recommended from this forum) there wasn’t too much in it because I heard that you want give them a bunch of space to walk around, but it seems like that made him think that he is stuck in one tiny area. I ended up adding a bunch of plants in pots that can’t be knocked over, some extra hides, and other nature themed stuff. I think the key is to create “mini” spaces using visual barriers that make the tort feel like traveling between different areas just like out in nature. Since I did this I have found my tort scratching at the walls here and there, but he stopped as soon as I moved things around to make it seem “new”.

2- Mating: I think one other potential reasons was that my tort was looking to mate, so he was digging trying to get somewhere else with a potential mate. By accident I realized that he liked one of the pieces of drift wood I put in there and started humping it lol. A lot less scratching since that happened. I have no idea how to find a suitable thing your tortoise would like. I saw some threads on here about deflated basketballs etc I would take a look at those.

Best of luck!

 

[danii1207]

@danii1207 @Littleredfootbigredheart

Sorry guys I forgot about this thread. But yes! So I tried a couple of different solutions over the time I made this post, but I narrowed it down to these two:

1- Items in enclosure: So even though the enclosure itself was big (at least bigger than the minimum recommended from this forum) there wasn’t too much in it because I heard that you want give them a bunch of space to walk around, but it seems like that made him think that he is stuck in one tiny area. I ended up adding a bunch of plants in pots that can’t be knocked over, some extra hides, and other nature themed stuff. I think the key is to create “mini” spaces using visual barriers that make the tort feel like traveling between different areas just like out in nature. Since I did this I have found my tort scratching at the walls here and there, but he stopped as soon as I moved things around to make it seem “new”.

2- Mating: I think one other potential reasons was that my tort was looking to mate, so he was digging trying to get somewhere else with a potential mate. By accident I realized that he liked one of the pieces of drift wood I put in there and started humping it lol. A lot less scratching since that happened. I have no idea how to find a suitable thing your tortoise would like. I saw some threads on here about deflated basketballs etc I would take a look at those.

Best of luck!

Thank you so much!!!

 

[Littleredfootbigredheart]

@danii1207 @Littleredfootbigredheart

Sorry guys I forgot about this thread. But yes! So I tried a couple of different solutions over the time I made this post, but I narrowed it down to these two:

1- Items in enclosure: So even though the enclosure itself was big (at least bigger than the minimum recommended from this forum) there wasn’t too much in it because I heard that you want give them a bunch of space to walk around, but it seems like that made him think that he is stuck in one tiny area. I ended up adding a bunch of plants in pots that can’t be knocked over, some extra hides, and other nature themed stuff. I think the key is to create “mini” spaces using visual barriers that make the tort feel like traveling between different areas just like out in nature. Since I did this I have found my tort scratching at the walls here and there, but he stopped as soon as I moved things around to make it seem “new”.

2- Mating: I think one other potential reasons was that my tort was looking to mate, so he was digging trying to get somewhere else with a potential mate. By accident I realized that he liked one of the pieces of drift wood I put in there and started humping it lol. A lot less scratching since that happened. I have no idea how to find a suitable thing your tortoise would like. I saw some threads on here about deflated basketballs etc I would take a look at those.

Best of luck!

Oh thanks so much for replying! Really wonderful to get an update! Sorry to see no one replied to the original thread when you made it, I’m glad he’s doing well these days

This is an impressive ‘multi level’ example btw!

 

[The_Four_Toed_Edward]

1- Items in enclosure: So even though the enclosure itself was big (at least bigger than the minimum recommended from this forum) there wasn’t too much in it because I heard that you want give them a bunch of space to walk around, but it seems like that made him think that he is stuck in one tiny area. I ended up adding a bunch of plants in pots that can’t be knocked over, some extra hides, and other nature themed stuff. I think the key is to create “mini” spaces using visual barriers that make the tort feel like traveling between different areas just like out in nature. Since I did this I have found my tort scratching at the walls here and there, but he stopped as soon as I moved things around to make it seem “new”.

Sight barriers can be great at reducing stress!

 

[aayid]

Hi everyone,
For a while my russian tort who is around 4 and a female has been digging at the walls. She used to do this in the past but usually after upgrading her past enclosures she would be okay.
A couple of weeks ago she started doing it again in her IKEA bookshelf enclosure (inspired by the post from this sub) with shower curtains. So I decided to upgrade it again and since my space was limited, I just bought a second bigger bookshelf and made a makeshift ramp between the two. At first I was very happy with the way it came out but after putting my tort in it she started doing the same exact thing. I gave her some time hoping that it was all due to the changes, but it’s been weeks now and she’s still doing it even though she moves between the levels.
I’ve payed attention to her behavior and noticed she has two modes: one is the wall scratching behavior and the other is she will sleep in her hide most of the day and maybe come out to bask once or twice while generally staying in the same area. The second behavior only happens after I feed her dry pellets and she eats a good bit of them. I’ve tried giving her a lot of greens before to see if it has the same affect but usually she will just eat a good bit and then go back to digging at the walls.
The size of her enclosure is 93x31 downstairs and 73x31 upstairs. Heat and uvb is measured and okay. The substrate upstairs is shallow but downstairs she has deep areas where she can burrow. I plan to add more substrate soon.
Any help or ideas is appreciated!

hi! im looking into getting a russian tort and i wanted to do an enclosure like yours to take advantage of the height in my room. i'm probably also going to buy ikea bookshelves but how did you connect them? i think i can see a table or something holding the second shelf but did you just cut a hole in the top shelf and make the ramp yourself? thanks!

 

[newbtort]

Hi everyone,
For a while my russian tort who is around 4 and a female has been digging at the walls. She used to do this in the past but usually after upgrading her past enclosures she would be okay.
A couple of weeks ago she started doing it again in her IKEA bookshelf enclosure (inspired by the post from this sub) with shower curtains. So I decided to upgrade it again and since my space was limited, I just bought a second bigger bookshelf and made a makeshift ramp between the two. At first I was very happy with the way it came out but after putting my tort in it she started doing the same exact thing. I gave her some time hoping that it was all due to the changes, but it’s been weeks now and she’s still doing it even though she moves between the levels.
I’ve payed attention to her behavior and noticed she has two modes: one is the wall scratching behavior and the other is she will sleep in her hide most of the day and maybe come out to bask once or twice while generally staying in the same area. The second behavior only happens after I feed her dry pellets and she eats a good bit of them. I’ve tried giving her a lot of greens before to see if it has the same affect but usually she will just eat a good bit and then go back to digging at the walls.
The size of her enclosure is 93x31 downstairs and 73x31 upstairs. Heat and uvb is measured and okay. The substrate upstairs is shallow but downstairs she has deep areas where she can burrow. I plan to add more substrate soon.
Any help or ideas is appreciated!

i know this is super old, but how did you make the ramp? How did you put the plywood together? Glue? Screws?

Thank you.