# Tortoise constipation



## Diane Berner (Apr 28, 2016)

Hi everyone! You have all helped me before with the trials and tribulations of raising a hatchling redfoot. Turtie is now 16 months old and is still having problems pooping. He had a run in with a vet about 3 months ago and thats when this all started. He was pooping daily and then the vet dosed him with some metrodiazole to get rid of protozoa in his gut. I never should have allwed this but the vet was recommended on tortoise forum. He tubed the medicine into his stomach causing him to vomit. The vet told me to bring him back in a few days so he could dose him again since he had vomited all the medication. I did that. This started all the problems. I have tried following everyones advice with soaking, feeding aloe vera and pumpkin ( which he wont eat) and benebac. Still he is only pooping every 7-10 days and poop is sometimes a little dry when it finally comes out. Hes eating well and is active and alert. He loves to walk in the yard and goes outside every day possible for a few hours. Should i continue to worry about this or should i consider this the new normal for him?


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## Yvonne G (Apr 28, 2016)

What is is diet? If you feed moist foods it helps keep the insides moist as it travels through the digestive tract. You can offer aloe, cucumber, cactus, etc.

Also, scrambling in a tub of water, trying to get out, sometimes causes them to poop.

But since this seems to be a constant problem, maybe the diet and hydration are at fault. May we know what he eats and how often he gets soaked?


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## wellington (Apr 28, 2016)

I agree with Yvonne. what are you feeding? How often is he soaked, what are temps? If there isn't a proper basking temp, he may not be digesting properly. Always double check temps. They don't always stay the same.


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## Kasia (Apr 28, 2016)

Diane Berner said:


> Hi everyone! You have all helped me before with the trials and tribulations of raising a hatchling redfoot. Turtie is now 16 months old and is still having problems pooping. He had a run in with a vet about 3 months ago and thats when this all started. He was pooping daily and then the vet dosed him with some metrodiazole to get rid of protozoa in his gut. I never should have allwed this but the vet was recommended on tortoise forum. He tubed the medicine into his stomach causing him to vomit. The vet told me to bring him back in a few days so he could dose him again since he had vomited all the medication. I did that. This started all the problems. I have tried following everyones advice with soaking, feeding aloe vera and pumpkin ( which he wont eat) and benebac. Still he is only pooping every 7-10 days and poop is sometimes a little dry when it finally comes out. Hes eating well and is active and alert. He loves to walk in the yard and goes outside every day possible for a few hours. Should i continue to worry about this or should i consider this the new normal for him?


Are you sure that you see all his/hers poops? Parasites that are treated with metronidazole cause diarrhoea but still some of them are a part of a natural gut flora. If they were wiped out by metronidazole it will take time to restore natural flora equilibrium. I have a leopard tort with a persisting flagellate problem. His been on three day metronidazole therapy that wiped his gut flora and flagellate as well. It took me 2-3 months to regenerate his bowels and make him poop solid. I read on this forum about restoring gut flora by making tort eat a healthy tort's poop to regenerate the intestine flora and talk with Vet about it as a last resort. He said it is a good idea to try. Maybe you should try it?


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## Diane Berner (Apr 28, 2016)

I am soaking him once a day, in the morning when I wake him up, for about 15-20 minutes in warm water. Then I feed him his greens (spring mix, dandelion greens, collard greens, turnip greens are offered). He will eat some squash, cooked sweet potato, prickly pear cactus, shitake mushrooms, banana, mango and raspberries. I alternate things and try to keep his fruit consumption down to a small amount daily. He used to eat cucumber but now has started to ignore it. He seems to have gotten pickier as he's gotten older. Some days if he's eaten too much of his favorites he won't eat the next day no matter what is offered. He has a 100 watt basking bulb about 16" above his substrate. He also has a heating pad which he uses after he's had a large meal to help him digest his food. He will sit on it for hours. The mat is covered with substrate so he can move things around to get to the temperature he wants. We pretty much know when he poops so we are sure we aren't missing anything. If he sits on a hot pavement he sometimes will poop. He also poop for some strange reason when he is being held and given reiki ( a type of natural energy healing). I have had a vet tell me to give him some poop from a healthy redfoot. I don't know anyone else who has a redfoot so that is not possible right now.


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## Kasia (Apr 28, 2016)

Diane Berner said:


> I am soaking him once a day, in the morning when I wake him up, for about 15-20 minutes in warm water. Then I feed him his greens (spring mix, dandelion greens, collard greens, turnip greens are offered). He will eat some squash, cooked sweet potato, prickly pear cactus, shitake mushrooms, banana, mango and raspberries. I alternate things and try to keep his fruit consumption down to a small amount daily. He used to eat cucumber but now has started to ignore it. He seems to have gotten pickier as he's gotten older. Some days if he's eaten too much of his favorites he won't eat the next day no matter what is offered. He has a 100 watt basking bulb about 16" above his substrate. He also has a heating pad which he uses after he's had a large meal to help him digest his food. He will sit on it for hours. The mat is covered with substrate so he can move things around to get to the temperature he wants. We pretty much know when he poops so we are sure we aren't missing anything. If he sits on a hot pavement he sometimes will poop. He also poop for some strange reason when he is being held and given reiki ( a type of natural energy healing). I have had a vet tell me to give him some poop from a healthy redfoot. I don't know anyone else who has a redfoot so that is not possible right now.


Where do you live? Maybe someone from her lives near you and can donate a piece of fresh poop


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## SarahChelonoidis (Apr 29, 2016)

What are your 'four temperatures' in the enclosure? If he is spending time somewhere - day or night - that is too cold, bowel movements will be less frequent. Upping the length of baths - try 40 minutes, keeping the water warm by refreshing it periodically, instead of 15 - should also increase the poop frequency.


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## Diane Berner (Apr 29, 2016)

I live in Fort Worth Texas. His basking spot is about 90 degrees. His heat pad which is on the side opposite his basking spot is between 80-85 and his cool side is about 75. He varies where he sleeps at night. Sometimes after a large meal he will sleep on his heat mat but usually it is under some moss on the cool side of his enclosure. He has also been using a log to sleep on that is on his cool side. The only other change I made after I saw the vet was to put another small heat mat under his water dish in an attempt to create more humidity in the enclosure. This was the vets suggestion. He said he used to be a zoo vet and that this was one of the things they did to create humidity in an environment.


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## Pearly (Apr 29, 2016)

Hi Diane, I'm in Austin area, and have 2 very healthy RF poopers... But little too far to drive just for the poo...
Don't do banana, try papaya instead. Do you chop or grate his food? When I'm worried about something gut related in my babies, I dice, or chop, or grate or even blend their food adding soaked Mazuri to it and something that I know they will not be able to refuse. Restoring gut flora is a matter of time. Do you have a place outside where he can graze, hunt snails etc? I think that would help too. And how about probiotics? Could maybe try Florastor for kids or I think I've seen one for reptiles on line somewhere. They are not cheap Florastor is like 27$ for a small box. I always buy it for my kids when they have to take antibiotic. It's a powder and you could just sprinkle and mix it with his chopped/blended food


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## Diane Berner (Apr 29, 2016)

Tutie used to eat papaya but he is now refusing alot of foods he used to eat. I continue to offer them but the foods just sit untouched. I am a little leery of the Mazuri because its made primarily of grains ( correct me if I"m wrong) and tthat they will eat this and ignore other foods. I'm primarily using banana and sweet potato to get him to take calcium and the benebac reptile probiotic I'm giving him. I am still learning how to best take care of him but there is a big learning curve.


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## Diane Berner (Apr 29, 2016)

Oh he is also outside under supervision because he has started to take an interest in eating small stones and twigs. The only insect i've seen him eat is a sow bug (roly poly). He has been afraid of worms and things. Right now he's eating eggs for protein.


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## Pearly (Apr 29, 2016)

Variety is a key. Check out my thread "PEARLY's tips on feeding picky eater" or something like that. You may get some ideas there. As for Mazuri, and other commercial foods, they ALL seem to contain grain in some quantities (I don't think big enough to worry about it). I add some type of commercial food in small proportion to my babies' food almost daily. It's just like with cats (I happen to have couple of them), I feel like giving them some cat food fills in the gaps where I may have missed. We are not feeding them exactly what they are made to eat in the wild, and commercial foods are designed to meet those requirements. 
For protein have you tried cooked shrimp? Or fresh raw meet or fish? I scraped some fresh steak for my babies last night before putting spices and cooking it. Omg! They LOVED IT!!!

. Have you called your vet to address this? Eating rocks/twigs is likely instinctual way of trying to eliminate uncomfortably full gut. Animals often do that to add "grit" to help move things along


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## Diane Berner (Apr 29, 2016)

I will order him some mazuri pellets. How often should he have this? I'm afaid of taking him to the vet because last time I talked to him he wanted to give him barium to see how that moves through his gut. I've been given barium before and it would not be something I think an already constipated tortoise should have. Very hard to pass.


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## Diane Berner (Apr 29, 2016)

Once a week we had been feeding him some high quality dry dog food that had been soaked overnight and he seemed to have no problem pooping. The vet said no more because that type of protein leaches nutrients out of his bones ( i think he said phosphorus).


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## Pearly (Apr 30, 2016)

The redfoot tortoise has to have protein in her diet. Many of our members here do use dog food for protein, but I'm not sure about the long term effects of it. To me, RF torts are like scavengers. They eat whatever they can find in nature including carrion and poop, so their gut must be designed to handle some not-so-good stuff. Have you had a chance to look through the diet section here? Also Tortoise Library (just google the name) is all about the Redfooted species. TONS OF GREAT INFO. That's where I learned at the beginning. In your spare time also check out the HEALTH section and search under keywords "constipation" or similar. It'll pull up threads related to it. You can learn a lot that way and get some ideas.


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