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Thread: digging out of outdoor enclosures?

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Oct 2012
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    Default digging out of outdoor enclosures?

    Just joined the site. Glad you're here.
    Most of my lizards are outdoors in enclosures with subterranean leaf-litter boxes to dig into for winter brumation.
    I have very young tegus (Argentine B&W, and Reds), and I'd like to build large enclosures - perhaps 8'x4' or so. The question is, what kind of bottom do I need to keep them from digging out? If I sink the walls down a couple feet, will they just dig down and not come back up elsewhere outside of the walls? Do I need to set a wire mesh beneath the whole thing?

    Ideally, what I had in mind was to just set my walls into the ground a couple feet deep, and build them a den box below the ground (near the middle of the enclosure) to use for sleeping, shelter, etc.

    Is there anyone here who has done such a thing?

  2. #2

    Default

    you might have to cement the bottom.. then throw your bedding over it. some tegus will dig very deep and dont want to risk any escaping

  3. #3
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    At the research facility in Brasil where I did much of my research on tegus, our outdoor pens had walls that went down into the soil maybe a foot or two at most. We provided burrows for the animals to nest and hibernate in, and in most cases this was more than sufficient. There were exceptions, but they were rare. In fact I can only recall one pen (out of many....) where they had dug down under the wall. It was more a concern of us being able to reach them as they didn't dig out all the way, and if I remember correctly, this was a pen that was originally used for iguanas and therefore hadn't initially had a proper burrow.


  4. #4
    Join Date
    Oct 2006
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    That's quite a set-up. Did you have any issue with predators from overhead?
    Laura R (FL)
    1.0.0 Colombian Tegu
    1.4.0 Argentine B&W Tegu
    1.2.0 Red Tegu
    1.2.0 B/WxRed Tegu
    1.0.0 Green Ameiva (yet another teiid)
    7 other lizards
    1 little gator
    3 FL box turtle
    1 Sulcata tortoise
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    4 little frogs
    a bunch of creepy bugs
    and a partridge in a pear tree

  5. #5
    Join Date
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    Hi RandeM. Welcome to our Tegu forum family. Here are two links for you to check out if you like. In the first link instead of using rocks you can put a wire screen ( one with very small holes ) in there. I wouldn't put a full concreet slab on the buttom because if it rains alot it might be very hard for the water to drain off. Unless you have the top screened of, too, like in the last photo in the link and put a tarp over it when it rains.

    http://www.riobravoreptiles.com/howto_outdoor.htm

    Videos of someones enclosure:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHibOTlNHks

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGYNF8pXmik&feature=plcp
    Rich is not how much you have, or where you are going, or what you are.Rich is who you have beside you.

    Our videos :

    http://www.youtube.com/user/txrepgirl

  6. #6
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    The only real avian predators we ever saw were caracara eagles, and they would only go after hatchlings and juveniles. This presented no problem as most of our hatchlings were raised indoors.

    However, it did just occur to me that the kind of substrate present may be a concern over how deep to put the walls. In South America, the soil is predominantly clay, not exactly easy material for tegus to dig through. Sandy loam or something more easily dug through would present a problem. txrepgirl makes a very good point, you need to be concerned with water run off so a totally concrete bottom would probably cause a lot of problems in its own right.

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Oct 2012
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    I'm in the Mojave Desert and the dirt is really hard until it gets wet. I just read that Bert Langerwerf went down a couple feet with his wall and he claimed that was sufficient. I do want to let them have they're fun in the dirt so long as they don't escape. Maybe I'll go down 3' just to be safe.

    @ Tupinambis ----> What are the dimensions of your burrow/den? I need to have something deep enough to insulate from the cold winters, but also accessible to get into for cleaning etc. I also want to try to keep it humid enough down there to counter the arid conditions here. Not sure yet, but what I sort of have in mind is to bury a large drink cooler beneath the ground and cut a hole in the side of it where they can crawl through a corrugated ducting tube to get to the surface. The whole thing will be covered with leaf litter and a tarp. I'll leave a remote thermometer in there during the winter to monitor the temps.
    The tegus are indoors for this winter. This setup will be for next winter, so I'll have some time to experiment.



    Sorry for jumping right into this topic here. I should probably continue this on the forum for enclosures and such. Since we're here though...
    Glad to meet you all. Thanks for the input.
    Last edited by RandeM; 10-27-2012 at 02:59 AM.

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