female digging

[jandh]

hi everyone ...my female has been randomly digging up my garden ,all over the grass , trying to make a hole to lay , the clay is so hard she gets so far and walks off and trys again somewhere different , ive tried putting down soil , for her to digg in , and making next sites but she ignores these and walks off , been going on about a week now ...she last layed 3 years ago , and done the same , any ideas please x

[Suze65]

Have you got a flower bed you could dig over for her, they can be very fussy, and yes my girls can do this for a week or two, it does get very frustrating. The weather this weekend is supposed to be very hot, so this might spur her on to get on with it. Try the flower bed idea, it might take a while until she decides it's a good place. When she starts to dig on the grass, put her on the flower bed and she might keep digging, that's what I do sometimes. Good luck.

[jandh]

thanks suze ....i keep putting her on a pile of soil i have put on lawn , but she wont go near it just walks off .....x

[kazzabb]

Originally Posted by jandh

hi everyone ...my female has been randomly digging up my garden ,all over the grass , trying to make a hole to lay , the clay is so hard she gets so far and walks off and trys again somewhere different , ive tried putting down soil , for her to digg in , and making next sites but she ignores these and walks off , been going on about a week now ...she last layed 3 years ago , and done the same , any ideas please x

Hi, one of mine did the same last year, and again, on a lawn which sits on heavy clay.

I took note of where she'd been digging because she took ages sniffing out just the right places, took a 1'x2' piece of turf up, and dug over the soil underneath so that about 7" down was quite loose, added a bit of topsoil and watered it and tramped it down again. The I broke off a few bits of the turf I'd taken up, and loosely laid it back onto the bit I'd dug over, just in case there was a smell on that bit of grass she liked.

That area of the lawn looked messy, but with her back to the sun, one afternoon, she dug and laid in that very bit. Once she'd laid and I'd dug them up, I put back the turf and it grew again.

Otherwise, I've built this thing on the left of the photo - the half-moon log roll thing, which slopes upwards away from the sun - The depth is about 10" at the back/highest bit. But I've no idea if the females would use this or not, or if it's just something that looks like they should use

[egyptiandan64]

Has she laid yet?

Danny

[Stellanne]

My ever suffering other half was attacking a stoney place with chisel and hammer today..., one of my creep has been trying to lay, for get first time, on pebbles. I have kept moving her to better ground but she keeps going back to the same place. If you can't beat them join them..... So poor partner has dug a space and filled it with softer soil... Fingers crossed x x

[kazzabb]

Hi Stellanne, I really think that it's something they smell which decides where they want to lay - they seem to spend a lot of time sniffing the ground first, that's why when I took up the turf where she was trying to scratch a nest, I kept it to one side, dug over the heavy clay underneath and replaced some with softer soil then I broke that turf piece up, and laid it on top of the soft damp soil. So there might be something she can smell in the stony/pebbly bit that makes her want to keep going back to it. I might have this all wrong though.
Karen