Nmcgowan
Member
- Joined
- Jan 15, 2016
- Messages
- 53
https://www.reddit.com/user/NyelloN...to_quick/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app
https://www.reddit.com/user/NyelloN...the_time/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app
Hello everyone. I haven’t posted in a while because well...we haven’t really had a any problems with Darwin until now. This might be long but I would appreciate anyone’s insight on this situation.
Some of you may remember some of my posts of when I first acquired my leopard tort. At that time we had named “her” Molly. Then I was flashed in the bath one day and the name was changed to Darwin.
But anyway, Darwin is 5 years old. He is around 10-11 inches now and very heavy! He has an outdoor enclosure that we try to get him into as often as we can. We live in upstate NY so it’s mainly spring/summer weather we have to wait for. This season has been especially rainy and cold so we haven’t been able to get him in there yet. The outdoor enclosure is 11ft x 7ft. The walls are 3 layered high stone blocks and he has a hide out there.
During the colder months Darwin stays in our home in his own room in a 5ft x 5ft wooden box that we made. This can be seen in one of the pics. It has two heat sources and we keep a humidifier in his room. His room never drops below 60% humidity and he knows how to acclimate his temps himself. When we first built the box, we just lined it in plastic and put eco earth in. We noticed that he would dig through the plastic making a mess and sometimes getting stuck. So this last time I cleaned out his enclosure I put tiles along the walls and in each of the 4 corners as these were his main digging spots. It was great, he can’t get into the plastic anymore.
The Problem: Darwin has been trying to climb the walls lately...A LOT. So much so that today we noticed he has ground down his toenails to an alarming shortness. As you can see from the one pic he has caused some chafing on his foot and ground a couple toenails down to the quick. You’d think the pain of doing this would make him stop but even as I’m typing this I can hear him trying to climb the walls.
Any ideas on how to curb this behavior would be appreciated.
https://www.reddit.com/user/NyelloN...the_time/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app
Hello everyone. I haven’t posted in a while because well...we haven’t really had a any problems with Darwin until now. This might be long but I would appreciate anyone’s insight on this situation.
Some of you may remember some of my posts of when I first acquired my leopard tort. At that time we had named “her” Molly. Then I was flashed in the bath one day and the name was changed to Darwin.
But anyway, Darwin is 5 years old. He is around 10-11 inches now and very heavy! He has an outdoor enclosure that we try to get him into as often as we can. We live in upstate NY so it’s mainly spring/summer weather we have to wait for. This season has been especially rainy and cold so we haven’t been able to get him in there yet. The outdoor enclosure is 11ft x 7ft. The walls are 3 layered high stone blocks and he has a hide out there.
During the colder months Darwin stays in our home in his own room in a 5ft x 5ft wooden box that we made. This can be seen in one of the pics. It has two heat sources and we keep a humidifier in his room. His room never drops below 60% humidity and he knows how to acclimate his temps himself. When we first built the box, we just lined it in plastic and put eco earth in. We noticed that he would dig through the plastic making a mess and sometimes getting stuck. So this last time I cleaned out his enclosure I put tiles along the walls and in each of the 4 corners as these were his main digging spots. It was great, he can’t get into the plastic anymore.
The Problem: Darwin has been trying to climb the walls lately...A LOT. So much so that today we noticed he has ground down his toenails to an alarming shortness. As you can see from the one pic he has caused some chafing on his foot and ground a couple toenails down to the quick. You’d think the pain of doing this would make him stop but even as I’m typing this I can hear him trying to climb the walls.
Any ideas on how to curb this behavior would be appreciated.