Are you talking bearded dragon?
My beardeds happily lay in soil only 4-6" deep or so. They don't have to have a big tunnel thing going on like a chameleon. Mine just dig and pile it all up away from one end or corner of the bin, leaving the bottom of the box exposed or nearly exposed, lay their eggs right there on the bottom, and then pile it back up over the eggs.
Question?: I know they usually lay in the evening ... her light goes off at round 830p and usually she's still digging and the minute its all dark she stops and climbs up to go to sleep.
I'm afraid the light cycle is stopping her - should I leave a low light on longer?
I've actually gotten pretty good at predicting when mine need to lay. They get scratching and if the eggs are fertile (I realize yours are not in this case) I can see and feel the abdominal lining tightening around the eggs preparing for laying. I then put the dragons in storage containers with a few inches of the laying substrate and close the lid.(I use fresh dug earth from my back yard- where I live unless it just rained within the previous few hours, it is always a good moisture content and I think the smell stimulates them to lay). I'm accurate enough now the last several years that most of the time they lay within a couple of hours of being placed in the bin, first try. But sometimes they don't- if they still haven't laid when lights go out, I leave them in there overnight and check them first thing in the morning. If they are outdoors, the sun goes down as usual, indoors, the lights go off as usual. Most of the time they will go on to nest and lay during the night and be done by morning when I do this. If not, I remove them from the bin for most of the day so they can warm up and drink and eat if they want and try them again in the bin in the late afternoon. Every once in a while I'll get a new mother who takes a few days of this before she lays. This is sometimes especially true if the eggs aren't fertile- seems to be a little more uncertain for them about when they need to lay, maybe their body starts telling them to get rid of them sooner or something. I would tend to believe that is what is going on with your female- I think she will lay when she needs to, and wouldn't worry about leaving the light on for her, or necessarily doing what I do and sealing her in the box- if she's digging I think she will lay for you eventually when she is truly ready. If you are getting a little nervous about things after 2 or 3 nights , you might try what I do. After that first clutch of eggs, nearly all are pretty fast about things and lay within a few hours after being placed in the bin.
The first 5 years or so after I started with bearded dragons I used to use nest boxes with entrances cut into them so the lizards could go in and out, but the females would toss soil all over the place and sometimes 2 females would want the box at the same time or sometimes they would try to lay in the soil they had tossed outside of the box, so about 10 years or so ago I so started just using separate boxes and I don't give them an entrance/exit option now, I put them in the box and close the lid and place the box in a cooler part of the cage away from the light or sun (depending on indoors or out), and it works better for me (and for the lizards- they know what to do when they get placed in the box).
All my girls start digging as soon as they wake up. Then if they decide to lay eggs. They are usally finished before 3pm or so.
That's a very interesting observation to me because it is very different from my own, and I wonder why that is. I wonder what the triggering factor is. Most of the time they start scratching in the afternoon around that time, and lay in the very late afternoon/very early evening. I wonder if yours are indoors or out? Most of my laying nowadays happens when they are outdoors for the summer, but indoors and out, my experience on timing has been the same. I wonder if your temps are warmer than mine?
by examination reveals no eggs, do you mean a vet has clearified this? have you provided an appropriate laying bin? and if so, have you thouroughly checked for eggs? she may have laid only a small clutch
