A few hills and mounds also assist basking. We have found this substrate to be extremely successful and have had no problems of any kind with it despite using it for several years now. To enhance hygiene, the top layer is scraped off from time to time and replaced with fresh material. An adequate depth of substrate is imperative especially for females about to nest. These are large tortoises, and nest excavations reflect this.
Some females nest quite late in the day.
Indeed, one of our own females habitually nests in the evening. These eggs are large and spherical, averaging 40 mm in diameter. Eggs are removed from the nest site after the female has filled the excavation back in with her hind legs, and are taken to our normal tortoise incubators. We generally find that hatching occurs in approximately 5 months, but this is subject to quite a degree of variation, even within individual clutches. As an example, one female laid four eggs on the 31 st August 1999, and these all hatched in mid-January 2000.