burrowing in wet soil

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morbank

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Hello all -- thanks for helping us newbies...

We have a large outdoor enclosure for the 2 russian tortoises, adopted 6 months ago. One disappeared last week, and I suspect he burrowed. The other female, quite a bit larger, keeps trying to burrow in the wet areas of the enclosure. I have a drip system to keep some of the grassy areas watered because of our lack of rain.

This morning I found the female burrowed again in this wet soil (it also rained a this morning). I am inclined to take her out again, soak her in warm, and then wait for her to dry up before putting her back in the enclosure.

I am sort of bewildered by their behaviors because:
1) The rescuer said that these tortoises had not ever hibernated
2) So Cal weather has winter temps that can be in the 70s during the day and down to high 30s-40s at night
3) mostly dry

I'd love feedback from anyone, especially those living in SoCal. I am fairly confident that these torts will be fine outside all year, but I am surprised that they are burrowing??

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kimber_lee_314

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I'm in So Cal. I personally like to box mine up and keep them in the garage, but every year one of my little girls (Katya) digs down before I can get it done. (Last year two other disappeared as well.) In the spring they all emerged with no issues. Several of my friends with Russians let them just hibernate in their pens every year. (They laugh at me for being so paranoid!) Some of girls are still active, but most of them are digging down even when I just let them out for a few hours. I am going to box them all up today, except one that I'm overwintering. Hope that was helpful! :)
 

GBtortoises

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Russian tortoises are a true burrowing species of tortoise. Despite your temperatures being in the 70's during the daytime, if it does consistently drop into the 30's & 40's at night they will most likely continue to bury themselves. This time of year the day light hours have decreased as well as being less intense than would be during the summer. These factors along with the decrease in night time temperatures are telling your tortoises that it is time to brumate (hibernate). If the temperatures continue to rise into the mid 60's to 70's they also may very well emerge from their burrows every few days. That will depend a lot on the specific location of their enclosure in relation the exposure to sun and heat. They would be perfectly fine in that situation outdoors for the winter if the soil they were burrowing into was drier. But if it is heavily saturated and does not dry out on a regular basis it can be unsafe for them to continue to brumate in that location. The wet soil combined with cold ground temperatures can be detrimental. You might want to consider another solution such as removing them and either providing a cold, dry situation for them to brumate in or bring them indoors and keep them awake and active throughout the winter.

Regardless of whether they did not brumate previously, they will, as they are in this situation, when the change in seasons and environmental conditions tell them to do so.
 

morbank

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We brought Burrito in today and soaked her in warm water, cleaned her off. She hung out with us indoors while we assessed the situation of the enclosure. I've decided for the time being to section off her enclosure to just the dry area right now. I added a ceramic heat source to one corner. I bought a bigger and better insulated rubbermaid house and built up the dry coir in there higher so there is more digging depth. All of the drips are turned off for now and over the next few days the dirt should dry out. Once it does I will allow her to roam the rest of the enclosure and keep the drips off for the remainder of the winter. More than half of the enclosure is under the eave of our house, so in the event of rain, the majority of the enclosure should stay dry. We get very little rain as it is.

What I don't understand is why she CHOSE to keep returning to the same area that was very wet. For now it's blocked off and I dug it up and put a large rock there. Unfortunately the smaller tortoise, Taco, is now gone, somewhere below. I hope that he will survive and make it back up.
 

kimber_lee_314

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I was digging up some roses today in between the rain storms, and I was really surprised to see the dirt wasn't even wet about 6-9 inches down. The soil might be a lot drier than you think it is.
 

Ashleigh B

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You might wanna try and find taco, if it rains to badly like it does every year during winter in california, then even if its under the eave, thats guuna flood when the storms start to hit. So it really is best to find were taco spent most of his time and try seeing if he burrowed there.
 

lynnedit

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They are funny about insisting on burrowing in a certain area. It might be as Kimber says, it might be drier down below, or she may just not have enough experience with SoCal weather to get it exactly right.

Possibly another option would be to cover the area she picked with sturdy plastic to let that area dry out (in addition to turning off drip, etc.). But your plan sounds good too. Sounds like these torts fell into a good situation!
 
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