concerned about beak growth?

[Clementine]

I've noticed that Igloo's upper lip is looking very overgrown - the ridges look too long, and I noticed that when she is trying to take a bite of squash, she ends up pushing the pieces further away instead of biting into them. Beak trimming in birds is very common. Has anyone heard of such a thing with tortoise?

 

[dmmj]

yes when a tortoise beak gets overgrown it can be trimmed no problem.

 

[Tom]

Its not normal for this to happen with a young sulcata.

Can we see a pic? What do you typically feed you tortoise?

 

[Clementine]

Sure - I'll post a picture of it in the morning. She eats mostly grass and hay. Occasionally with Kale, spinach, turnip greens, okra, aloe, cactus and Mazuri.

 

[Speedy-1]

You might try putting a cuttle bone in his enclosure , Speedy likes to chew on his it wears his beak plus he gets calcium from it . At least that works for him and my 3 parrots .

 

[SGT Fish]

when i got mine, his beak was overgrown in a buck toothed look and it was also cracked vertically from being so long, which i think is common for sulcatas where many other species with have their beak overgrow the whole way around. i bought a manicure kit off amazon for 7 bucks. very nice quality with some cuticle snips. i was planning on trimming it but worried about stressing him out. Well I came home from work and the GF had already trimmed it by distracting him with a strawberry. It is starting to grow back but has much better signs of wearing down. He now has little tooth looking spikes and I probably won't have to trim it ever again. But its not hard if i do have to.

dont be afraid to do it. it will take him a couple days to get used to eating with a different shaped mouth but in the end it will be better and easier for him to eat.