Burrowing too much

mini_max

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Nov 10, 2014
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386
Location (City and/or State)
Alberta, Canada
It's been a long time since I last posted! Our Russian, Max, is now approximately 4 years old. We live in Alberta, Canada, so he has been living in a large outdoor enclosure for the past few months, and will resume life indoors by the end of September.

He has a heated hide in his outdoor enclosure which is dug into a hill. For 3 summers now he has always slept borrowed just slightly in one end of this hide. However last week he tunnelled about a foot into his hill and did not come out for a week. We removed him, marvelled at how much he'd grown, and then soaked and fed him. He ate, pooped, and showed no signs of a health issue. His shell is smooth and shiny, his eyes are bright and not sunken, his plastron is perfect, and his tongue is pink. After removing him, we tried to plug his tunnel with rocks, however he did it again, and we dug him up 3 days later. He ate a bit, and we brought him to his indoor enclosure where he burrowed as best he could and has done little else for about a day.

What the heck? Has he/she reached some sort of maturity, and now wants to burrow and hibernate? What should I do? Please and thanks for the advice.
 

mini_max

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Nov 10, 2014
Messages
386
Location (City and/or State)
Alberta, Canada
Hmmmm, the sun has changed for sure since we're on the way to fall, but there are still quite a few hours of 90+ in his usual basking areas, but he's not coming out to use them. And his hide is heated so it doesn't go below 60, but I will check again - the nights are getting colder, maybe it's not enough.

But the thing that gets me is that whenever we bring him out even after warming up and hanging out he goes right back to being burrowed. And it is certainly not cold when he retires to his hide.
 

mini_max

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Nov 10, 2014
Messages
386
Location (City and/or State)
Alberta, Canada
You know, Wellington, thank you, you were right. I think the sun has shifted enough that a potent enough basking spot wasn't available when he needed it. After some more time inside under his mvb, and he's not burrowing anymore. Poor guy was too cold. I never would have thought!!!
 

the Turtle Shepherd

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May 16, 2017
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Location (City and/or State)
nowhere
yup, Wellington did it again,
I live in California and two of my Russians are getting sleepy already, and I mean it is California, so it is pretty freaken nice out here, but the little guys can still smell what we can not which is the nature, it is slowing down for the winter even here, only a naturalist would notice, your tort sounds happy as can be, so let him sleep or if you plan to take him indoors prepare a place where he could burry himself outside and you could just carefully scoop him in when it gets too cold, you do not want to interrupt the cycle, it burns a lot of energy unless you mean to defrost him and feed him again one more time:) lol he sounds happy:)
 

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