How to Tell if Your Tortoise Is Pregnant (Guide with Pictures)

In the case of most animals, it’s really easy to tell if they are pregnant or not, but in the case of tortoises, things are a little more complicated, as the signs are not as clear. But if you know what to look for it’s actually very easy to tell if a tortoise is pregnant or not.

The most common signs of pregnancy in a tortoise are small bumps on the plastron, changes in the basking behavior, changes in the diet, and strange behavior like wanting to escape the enclosure.

Before getting into more details about the visual and behavioral changes I want to remind you that a tortoise can lay eggs even if there is no male around. If there is no male around the eggs will not be fertilized, but there will still be eggs. Now let’s start discussing the visual signs.

Visual Signs

Unfortunately, the visual signs are not too easy to spot. Unlike in the case of mammals, the belly of a tortoise won’t change too much in size when it’s pregnant, so you will need a hands-on approach.

When tortoises are pregnant you should be able to feel the eggs by gently touching the plastron (the lower side of the shell) of your tortoise. But you have to be very careful when you do this, depending on the stage of the pregnancy the eggs might be extremely fragile, and you don’t want to crack them.

Here is a guide on how you should proceed:

Step 1

Gently pick your tortoise up by the sides. Just like in this picture:

Don’t pick your tortoise by the plastron and the top of the shell, this can damage the eggs if your tortoise is pregnant. So don’t do it like this:

Then gently place it with the belly up in your other hand. Placing your tortoise upside down won’t have any negative effects on its health if you keep it this way for just a couple of minutes.

Step 2

Now there are two ways you can check. The first one is to put one finger on the plastron and move it all over the plastron and see if you feel any bumps. Normally when the eggs are hard enough, they should slightly press against the shell and feel a few bumps.

Step 3

When you feel one of these bumps you can gently press on that spot and see if the egg moves. If there is an egg you should feel that the egg will slightly push back after you press.

Remember to press very gently, you don’t want to hurt the tortoise or to break the eggs. But if you are able to feel the eggs, it usually means that their shell is quite hard already, so there shouldn’t be any danger.

Step 4

If you don’t want to risk breaking the eggs or hurting the tortoise you can always go to a vet, most of them have a lot of experience in doing this.

The biggest problem with this method is that you shouldn’t be able to feel the eggs until your tortoise is at least halfway through her pregnancy. So a better way to find out if your tortoise is pregnant is to look at changes in her behavior.

Changes in Behaviour

The best way to know if a tortoise is pregnant is to look at her behavior.

In general, all changes in behavior mean that something is happening to your tortoise. If you have a female tortoise, those changes usually mean that she is pregnant.

There are quite a few behavioral changes that occur when a tortoise is pregnant. Here are the most common ones.

Changes in Diet

When a tortoise is pregnant the number of foods that she eats will drastically change. Usually, a pregnant tortoise will eat a lot less, or she won’t eat at all, the reason they do this is because they prefer to spend their time searching for a suitable nesting site, instead of eating.

There are a few tortoises that like to overeat in a situation like this. While overeating is not the most common response of a tortoise when she is pregnant, it can still happen, after all, every tortoise is different from the rest, and they all have a different personality.

Even if your tortoise doesn’t have that much space to search for a place to lay its eggs, it will still search for one, it’s its natural response to this situation.

Digging

A pregnant tortoise will dig a lot. If your tortoise is pregnant you might find her digging aggressively in the substrate of the enclosure, or in the basking area. This is also something that they do try to find a good nesting site.

Basking Habits

The basking habits of a pregnant tortoise will also change. When a tortoise is pregnant she will change her baking habits, she might end up not basking for days because she is trying to find a suitable place to lay the eggs.

Trying to escape

When a tortoise is pregnant she will do everything that she can to get out of the tank. She will try to dig holes, she will try to climb over, she might even try to break the enclosure, everything that can be done she will do it.

Even if the enclosure is 100% safe, your tortoise will still try to find a better hiding spot for her eggs, so don’t worry her enclosure is perfectly fine, but it’s not exactly what it needs at this moment.

So if your tortoise is showing all of those signs then you should try to feel the plastron, or even better go to the vet and let him check. And if your tortoise is truly pregnant then you still have work to do.

What To Do If Your Tortoise Needs to Lay Eggs

At this point, you basically have two options, and they all depend on your location and what season it is. If you live in a house with a yard and it’s warm outside then you can go outdoors, if you don’t have access to a yard or it’s cold outside then you should go indoors.

You should use those methods when your tortoise seems really desperate to get out of its enclosure.

The Outdoors Method

This is the simplest and usually the best way to do things.

First, make sure that your yard is secure and your tortoise can’t leave it, or simply make a smaller part of the yard secure and that should also be fine. After you are sure that your tortoise has no way to escape you can take her outside and let her find a good spot in the yard to lay her eggs.

If you want to help her find a place to lay her eggs faster then you should wet the ground before you let her out. tortoises usually choose to lay their eggs in places with wet earth.

If you use chemical fertilizers for your flowers or plants, you should try to keep the tortoise away from them, it’s not good for their health.

The outdoors method is ideal because you don’t have to do too much and is similar to what happens when a tortoise is pregnant in the wild.

The Indoors Way

For this method you are going to need:

Mix the organic soil with some sand and then fill about two-thirds of the container with the mixture. The container has to be a big one, otherwise, the tortoise will feel trapped in it and won’t feel comfortable enough to lay the eggs. Try to avoid any kind of pesticides or fertilizers, they are bad for the tortoise.

After you put the mixture in the container, spray some water over the soil until it’s a little moist after that partially cover the container with the lid, this way the tortoise will have a lit area and a slightly dimmer area where she can lay the eggs.

Before placing the tortoise in the container make sure that the temperature of the room is not too cold or too hot, and that there are no other people around or other animals that can disturb the tortoise.

Now you can safely place the tortoise in the container and wait for her to lay the eggs. It should take her between 2 and 3 hours to lay all the eggs. You can try to look at her while she is doing this but she might feel intimidated and won’t lay any eggs, if that is the case then you should leave her alone.

Even if the whole process of laying the eggs can take between 2 and 3 hours, your tortoise might have a specific time of the day when she wants to lay her eggs, so the best thing that you can do is to cloaca the container in a well naturally lit room, and leave her the entire day at her disposal, some tortoises might want to lay their eggs in the morning, some during the night, there is a specific time that tortoises lay eggs at.

Now let’s see what you can do with the eggs.

What to Do With the Eggs

Now that the eggs have been laid you basically have two options, and which one you will choose depends if the eggs are fertilized or not, and the time you have at your disposal.

The simplest way to know if the eggs are fertilized or not is this:

Did your female tortoise interact with a male tortoise recently?

No. In that case, the eggs are probably not fertilized, after all, you need a male tortoise to fertilize the eggs.

Yes. Then there is a good chance that the eggs are fertilized.

What to do if the eggs are not fertilized

If the eggs are not fertilized then you can just throw them away, no babies will come out of them at this point. Or you can always try to eat them. I personally haven’t tried them but I heard that they taste similar to chicken eggs. If the eggs are fresh you can safely cook and eat them if you want.

So if the eggs are not fertilized no baby tortoise will come out of them so you can basically do whatever you want with them.

What to do if the eggs are fertilized

At this point, you have two options.

Option 1. If you don’t have the time to take care of the eggs you can just throw them away. Not everybody has the time to take care of tortoise eggs, and then baby tortoises, so it’s completely understandable if you don’t want to keep them.

Option 2. If you want you can always incubate the eggs. The process is not very difficult but you will have to do a few things to make sure that the eggs will hatch. But taking care of tortoise eggs is another subject that I’ve already covered in another article. If you want to keep the eggs or you are just curious about how you can take care of tortoise eggs then check out this article: How to Take Care of Turtle Eggs.

Extra Tip

Before you start checking if your tortoise is pregnant, it’s a good idea to first check if your tortoise really is a female.

I know that it might seem a little weird, but you really need to check this first. If your tortoise is male then there is no chance of him being pregnant. Even if your tortoise shows behavioral changes similar to a pregnant tortoise, if it’s a boy it could mean something completely different.

So before you start checking if your tortoise is pregnant first make sure that it’s a female tortoise and not a male tortoise. If you don’t know how to check if your tortoise is male or female check this article out How to Tell If a Tortoise Is Male or Female (with Pictures).

Common Questions

How long do tortoises stay pregnant? The period can differ a lot based on the species, but in general, it can last anywhere from 3 to 6 months.

Can pet tortoises have babies? Yes, pet tortoises are biologically just like wild tortoises, so they can have babies just like wild tortoises can

Will a tortoise eat its own eggs? Yes, if the eggs are not fertilized, sometimes tortoises will eat the eggs if they are hungry.

Final Thoughts

So, in order to find out if your tortoise is pregnant, you can either try to feel her plastron and see if you can feel any eggs, or you can look at her behavior and see if there are any major changes.

The fact that your tortoise is pregnant shouldn’t change the way you take care of her. You just have to offer her a proper place to lay her eggs when the time comes, so this shouldn’t impact you too much.

I hope this article answers all of your questions, but if you still have some unanswered questions you can always leave a comment down below and I will answer them as soon as possible.