Stu won't sleep- overactive!!

[Carina and Stu]

Hi,

My beautiful hermanns tortoise, Stu, is going mad! We have him outside during the day but at night time we bring him inside to sleep in his cage. He is mostly fine in it, tjough the past couple of nights he has really wanted to get out, scrambling all over it, upside down and inside out if he could manage it! He is fine in the mornings. He is also wanting to mate anything and everything. If I let him mate would that fix the problem do you think?

Very tired human, very awake tortoise!
Carina

 

[Tom]

What are the temperatures in your night enclosure and is it dark or lit up? Are you using any sort of night heat?

Do you have a female too? Allowing him to breed will probably not solve his restlessness problem.

What time are you bringing him in? If you wait until after he beds down and its dark and a bit cooler outside, and then you bring him into a cool dark indoor enclosure, it might work better.

Where are you?

 

[Carina and Stu]

Hi Tom,

We live in a small flat in London with a garden. Yes he seems to be ok when i bring him in after he has bedded down outside, but as it's getting colder here and raining i dont like to leave him out too long. His cage os in the living room and i wonder if he wants to be up with us due to noise and light. Due to our flat being open plan and small there is nowhere else we can put it :-/

C

 

[laney]

Maybe you could put a blanket or something over his enclosure to help him know its bed time, like with parrots

 

[Merlin M]

All my tortoises live in our living room, they don't seem bothered by the lights or noise... sometimes they will go through phases of high activity... often I can calm them down by giving them extra food

 

[thatrebecca]

When my torts are indoors they're in our kitchen, which can be a bright and busy area at night. I put towels over their boxes so it stays dark in there and it seems to help.