Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello all, this is an update to an post a couple days ago that got no replies. Please respond if you have any ideas.

Last Wednesday went to feed the torts and found an EGG in the enclosure!!! I have a 7 year old, 24 pound female and an 8 pound, 3 year old male.

I have a large indoor enclosure with a plywood floor. About a year ago I added a 4'x4' dirt filled addition so that she could dig if needed. She is in it all the time, but it is very difficult to keep any moisture in it because it dries out so fast and when I water it the surface hardens like a giant dirt clod. I wanted to provide a place for her to lay eggs, but this does not seem to be working.

Anyway, my panic is that this is the first egg she has ever produced and she dropped it on the plywood floor of the enclosure, not in the dirt. I checked the dirt carefully and there are no other eggs that I can find. I would imagine that she needs to lay more.

I now have an incubator for the one egg so I am good there. The problem is that it has been 5 days now and she continues to exhibit behavior of wanting to lay more eggs. She has left large wet spots, drinks a lot, and is occasionally trying to dig with her back legs on the plywood floor. She goes in the dirt area all the time but does not dig there.

Things I have tried - I have walled off the dirt area so that she cannot leave that area. I have added a lot more sand to that area so that it is softer and not so compact. I added a heat lamp to that area as well. I know they can be very picky about where they lay eggs BUT IF THAT IS THE CASE WHY IS SHE TRYING TO DIG THROUGH THE PLYWOOD? Obviously the plywood floor is not "soft enough" or "the right moisture", but it might be the right temp.

Worst case scenario, if i bring her to the vet and she has eggs, what will they do about it? Can he get them out?

PLEASE HELP, Thanks,

Ben

I would add another area of dirt - different dirt - nice, moist potting soil (without any fertilizer pre-added) in the area where she is trying to dig. Even if its just a big, loose pile (at least 15-18" deep) you've got nothing to lose at this point, and she might just go for it. If not, you can easily remove it later. She's trying to tell you where she wants to nest, for whatever unfathomable reason, so just go with it...

I'm just guessing here - I've never had tortoise eggs - just turtles and snakes and lizards.

Jay

I cut a hole in the plywood floor and sunk a large tub into the floor so the lip sits on the plywood and filled it with dirt. She came over, snifffed around a long time, walked nearby and tried to dig up the plywood. I moved her over to it again, she did the same thing. The difference now was that she did not even stop digging when I came around - she really wanted to dig. Then I walled off the area she was digging so that she could not go there and placed her back over the dirt. I came back a little later and she had her front legs in the dirt and her rear legs out of the dirt and was digging the plywood just outside the dirt! I gently moved her forward 8 inches so that her back legs were in the dirt this time, she paused, waited, waited, and then started digging in the dirt!!

4 hours, 15 minutes later I went to bed with her still digging, and she was making no new progress because her plastron was sitting on the edge of the plastic tub and her back legs were dangling over the hole - she wanted it deeper but could not get herself down any further. Nothing I could do but cross my fingers.

Long story longer, I got up at 2:30 am to check on her and SHE DID IT! she layed the eggs and covered the hole. The cool thing was that the tub was nearly clear plastic so we could watch her dig from below because she had dug all the dirt away from one side of the tub - up close and personal. She laid 5 new eggs in addition to the one last week.

Now we just wait - and thanks for the suggestion.

Ben

Cool story. It's funny - some turtles "get in the zone" when they start digging and nothing phases them. You can watch, photograph, even move 'em around - and they just keep on digging. Other turtles will quickly abandon their efforts on the slightest sight of a human.

I had a box turtle this year that had just finished laying her eggs and was in the process of covering them up. It was late, I was ready to go to bed, I was getting eaten by mosquitoes, and I just wanted to get the eggs out of the ground and bring them inside to incubate. I gently lifted her off the nest and set her to the side. As I carefully dug-up the nest, she sat where I had placed her and continued to work her rear legs in vain, trying to cover up the nest she was no longer near. For fifteen minutes she continued to "sweep" the surrounding ground, pulling it to the center where she was convinced her nest was. Instinct is a strong motivator.