Failure to Thrive

[Cgeyer]

Failure to thrive(FTT) is usually due to inborn error of metabolism. It happens throughout the animal kingdom. Humans have; unfortunately, had to experience this phenomenon with their young. In the turtle and tortoise kingdom, a small percentage of hatchlings will usually die at 3 months from this phenomenon. If breeders did not sell their hatchlings until 6 months of age, then the breeder would deal with the consequences. Unfortunately, third party companies sell hatchlings soon after the yolk sac has been reabsorbed. I am not criticizing. It is a business representing captive raised hatchings. I applaud their efforts and have purchased many of my reptiles in this fashion.
I am writing this missive for two reasons. Primarily, because a great deal of information on tortoise forum regarding FTT seems to me to be an exercise in finger pointing. The breeders argue that owners are the problem. The owner; however, blames the breeder. In most cases, both parties are not to blame.
The Broad Institute of MIT is mapping the human genome. Artificial Intelligence in combination with high end genetics will soon unlock the real issues with FTT. It will most likely result from inborn errors of metabolism. My second reason for writing this missive; is, that I am a retired physician. The medical literature is as confusing as statements made on Tortoise Forum. Too often, personal experience and, infrequently, statements made by the Scientific Method are cited. We really do not have enough data. The good news is; that the Broad Institute and others are paving the way to make intelligent observations about this phenomenon.

 

[wellington]

I don't know the science behind it, but failure to thrive can have a lot to do with breeders still hatching the old outdated way on a substrate that when eaten kills. Breeders can blame the buyer, but it usually happens when a buyer purchased from a breeder that is doing it wrong from the second the egg is laid. There are many, many threads on here, l I have been here since 2011, of hatchlings dying or failing to thrive, then dying, and it's almost always, if not always, a tortoise purchased from breeders that hatch them hot and dry. So, it could be related to "inborn error of metabolism" as you stated, but it's caused by the poor practice of the breeder.

 

[Cgeyer]

Hi: The breeder for a newborn is the mother. However, the father contributes 50 % of the genetic material. Failure to thrive in this day and age for humans is usually an in born error of metabolism. However, in the animal kingdom the above scenario falls apart. As turtles and tortoises face diminished habitat, the rules change. Captive bred is an attempt to further the number of specimens. Because of this, I would be reluctant to criticize any breeder. No matter how bad the conditions, captive bred usually have a greater chance for living. Thank you for your comment. Carl

 

[TammyJ]

From what I have gathered from this newly hatched thread so far, I am beginning to suspect that its potential Failure To Thrive may indeed be due to an inborn error of metabolism rather than either breeder or purchaser error.

 

[TammyJ]

From what I have gathered from this newly hatched thread so far, I am beginning to suspect that its potential Failure To Thrive may indeed be due to an inborn error of metabolism rather than either breeder or purchaser error.

Tammy. Have you nothing useful to contribute, yet again?

 

[Tom]

Failure to thrive(FTT) is usually due to inborn error of metabolism. It happens throughout the animal kingdom. Humans have; unfortunately, had to experience this phenomenon with their young. In the turtle and tortoise kingdom, a small percentage of hatchlings will usually die at 3 months from this phenomenon. If breeders did not sell their hatchlings until 6 months of age, then the breeder would deal with the consequences. Unfortunately, third party companies sell hatchlings soon after the yolk sac has been reabsorbed. I am not criticizing. It is a business representing captive raised hatchings. I applaud their efforts and have purchased many of my reptiles in this fashion.
I am writing this missive for two reasons. Primarily, because a great deal of information on tortoise forum regarding FTT seems to me to be an exercise in finger pointing. The breeders argue that owners are the problem. The owner; however, blames the breeder. In most cases, both parties are not to blame.
The Broad Institute of MIT is mapping the human genome. Artificial Intelligence in combination with high end genetics will soon unlock the real issues with FTT. It will most likely result from inborn errors of metabolism. My second reason for writing this missive; is, that I am a retired physician. The medical literature is as confusing as statements made on Tortoise Forum. Too often, personal experience and, infrequently, statements made by the Scientific Method are cited. We really do not have enough data. The good news is; that the Broad Institute and others are paving the way to make intelligent observations about this phenomenon.

You've got limited information Carl, and it is impairing your ability to make informed judgements on this subject.

The fact of the matter is that tortoise care info has been largely wrong for decades. I was taught the wrong info back in the 70s and 80s, and I taught that wrong info to others for almost 20 years. I finally figured out that it was wrong after much failure, and years of experimentation, discussion amongst peers, observation of the keeping methods and results of others, and much trial and error. A little luck along the way too.

Little is known about what babies do in the wild because they disappear for years. We see the same phenomenon with sea turtles. Everyone has seen adult sea turtles swimming around in the tropical waters of the world. Everyone has seen babies hatching and running their annual gauntlet to the sea. But have you ever seen footage of a 6 inch or 12 inch little sea turtle? Its very rare. "The lost years." Same with baby tortoises. People think they come from arid regions and keep them dry, but wild babies hatch at the start of the hot, wet, humid monsoon season and then get rained on for 3-4 months, or more.

We can argue about what we think happens in the wild all day, but what cannot be argued is the clear, obvious, and overwhelming evidence of what happens in our captive environments when babies are raised in dry conditions, or raised in humid conditions and soaked daily. Error in metabolism has nothing to do with this in wild animals. What percentage of that may occur in humans or domestic mammals, I do not know, but wild animals simply don't have these issues, much the same way they don't have allergies like our domestic dogs, because natural selection immediately weeds out that sort of weakness in the wild.

I'll ask you to answer the same question that I have asked of other people who argue this point and these ideas: Why do some breeders lose a large percentage of their hatchings by the age of 6 months and make statements like: "Well some of them just aren't meant to survive...", while other breeders who use methods similar to mine have 100% survival rates with all of their babies thriving, clutch after clutch, and year after year? Its not coincidence or luck. Its because wild babies, even in arid regions, hide out in humid areas, NOT out in the open in dry exposed conditions. Necropsy has shown time and time again that these "failures to thrive" are the result of internal organ failure due to chronic dehydration, usually starting with the kidneys. By the time one of these babies gets to a vet, all systems are failing and vets commonly misdiagnose what is going on because the vets, book writers, breeders, and long term tortoise keepers are largely ignorant of what I just explained.

I am not talking about me getting lucky with a few hatchings. My sample size is literally thousands of my own hatchlings over more than a decade now, of half a dozen species. My survival rates have little to do with the parents of my hatchlings and everything to do with the incubation of the eggs and care of the hatchlings. Observation of other breeders, using both methods, all around the world confirms my own findings as well. I cannot speak to what is happening in human babies, or domestic dogs and livestock, but I can speak to what is happening with tortoises because of more than 30 years of study, experimentation, and first hand experience doing it every which way imaginable with thousands of individuals of many different species.

By the way, can I interest you in a batch of unrelated baby Burmese stars? I have lots to sell with more eggs being laid regularly...

 

[G-stars]

I am a tortoise keeper that just happen to hatch out a few dozen tortoises each year, at least 50 babies a year. Out of all of those less then 1% are born with some deformity that will cause them to die. This usually occurs within a week or so after hatching. I keep all of them for at least 3 months before they go to their new homes, by which time they have at least doubled their hatch weight.

What I’m trying to say here is that, over 99% of hatched tortoises don’t hatch with failure to thrive. It has to do with husbandry practices of the breeder or new keeper. I’m sure there are exceptions to this rule such as if the hatchling has some disease that was transferred from the mother. At which point it is not failure to thrive but instead caused by a disease.

I know many other breeders like @Tom and @Markw84 who also have similar records.

 

[TammyJ]

I am so happy to see that my initial scepticism was unfounded, and that in fact, this thread is Thriving as a result of proper nurturing and husbandry.

 

[wellington]

I am so happy to see that my initial scepticism was unfounded, and that in fact, this thread is Thriving as a result of proper nurturing and husbandry.

Not sure how you didn't get it already from all the threads of failing hatchlings. I don't think one failing to thrive hatchling was ever from a breeder that did it correctly.

 

[Cgeyer]

Almost every children’s hospital has a webpage on FTT. There, certainly, is a behavioral component. My slant is to highlight the metabolic component only to emphasize the importance of peer reviewed papers on this topic. I
have trouble with finger pointing. The Broad Institute has a 300 million dollar grant to analyze the human genome with AI. This has huge implications.

 

[wellington]

Almost every children’s hospital has a webpage on FTT. There, certainly, is a behavioral component. My slant is to highlight the metabolic component only to emphasize the importance of peer reviewed papers on this topic. I
have trouble with finger pointing. The Broad Institute has a 300 million dollar grant to analyze the human genome with AI. This has huge implications.

What do humans FTT have to do with tortoises? You are comparing apples to oranges. One has nothing to do with the other!

 

[Cgeyer]

They are apples and apples. How many scientific papers are written about FTT and Tortoise hatchlings? How many papers are written about FTT and newborns? The veterinarian literature recapitulates scientific studies in humans. Until you can show me a scientific paper to support your idea, it is finger pointing to me.

 

[wellington]

They are apples and apples. How many scientific papers are written about FTT and Tortoise hatchlings? How many papers are written about FTT and newborns? The veterinarian literature recapitulates scientific studies in humans. Until you can show me a scientific paper to support your idea, it is finger pointing to me.

The veterinarians can't even get the simplest care right with tortoises and you think they have a clue about FTT and hatchlings, let alone doing extensive studies, lol.
Do you have tortoises? Are you a breeder that doesn't want to do it the correct way and you're trying to defend your poor practices? Just wondering what your experience, if any, is with tortoises?

 

[Tom]

Almost every children’s hospital has a webpage on FTT. There, certainly, is a behavioral component. My slant is to highlight the metabolic component only to emphasize the importance of peer reviewed papers on this topic. I
have trouble with finger pointing. The Broad Institute has a 300 million dollar grant to analyze the human genome with AI. This has huge implications.

Humans keep "unfit" other humans alive with medicine and advanced medical care. Same with domesticated animals. When we lived in the wild, nobody had bad eyesight, allergies, heart conditions, diabetes, or any other ailments that would prevent a person from dodging predators and moving around the landscape. Those who were born with such problems were quickly removed from the gene pool, as they are with any wild animal species. While it is not my area of expertise, I do have animal experience on this realm, and I would not be surprised to learn of genetic components or congenital defects in humans and domesticated animals.

In the case of all these dying baby tortoises, the genetic component is far less than one percent. All breeders see a rare occasional defective baby come out of the egg, but these are obvious on day one. I see one of these for every two or three hundred babies hatched. Twins in one egg, misshapen carapaces, etc... It happens, but it is exceedingly rare, and its obvious from day one. Almost all of these failure to thrive cases can be directly traced to chronic dehydration at hatching and for the few weeks or months after because most breeders have the wrong idea about where they come from ad how to house them, and the symptoms are consistent, with the same tell tale signs, from one case to the next. Unfortunately, there is no peer reviewed study on this matter, or most other tortoise matters. We are the ones doing the studying and compiling the data. If there is finger pointing, it is because one group with one care routine has large numbers of hatchlings dying, while the other group with the other care routine has no hatchlings dying.

Simply put: If you house a hatchling on dry substrate with low humidity, or keep it outside all day, only soak once a week, and don't offer humid hides, that hatchling will likely live and seem normal for several weeks and sometimes several months, but they don't seem to grow past the 50 gram mark, and eventually fall ill, stop eating, get lethargic, get a soft plastron (Which is where most vets will misdiagnose calcium deficiency...) and die shortly thereafter. By contrast: If you soak daily, use damp substrate, maintain high humidity, offer humid hides, and keep the babies mostly indoors in large closed chambers, they steadily grow, pass right through that 50 gram mark, and continue on thriving to adulthood. It goes one way or the other, and it is directly attributable to how they are housed and cared for and has nothing to do with their genetics. I've done multiple side-by-side comparisons with randomly selected large groups of clutch mates to prove these facts. My peers here have reviewed these studies and methodology agreed with my conclusions, and been able to duplicate my experiments and results. This is not an unknown, unstudied phenomenon. The results of housing one way or the other are consistent and repeatable.

 

[Tom]

They are apples and apples. How many scientific papers are written about FTT and Tortoise hatchlings? How many papers are written about FTT and newborns? The veterinarian literature recapitulates scientific studies in humans. Until you can show me a scientific paper to support your idea, it is finger pointing to me.

And you point out to us where there is a peer reviewed and approved of Institute for Chelonian studies somewhere in the world that is working on, or has worked on this problem. There is no such thing. There are no papers that I've ever seen or heard of on FTT in hatchling tortoises. Presumably, there would be mountains of these papers for human babies. There is little interest in any such entity or study outside of people like us who keep tortoises. We are doing our own research, and we've been sharing those results, good or bad, here publicly for more than a decade.

I am finger pointing. Guilty as charged. I am pointing the finger at the group that produces all the dead babies due to their flawed husbandry practices. If you wish to bury your head in the sand, ignore mountains of data and facts, experiments that have been repeated all over the globe for more than a decade, and wait for some imaginary scientific institution to write a paper in scientific terms that you approve of, you will never learn anything. Even if such a scientific institute existed and they did a study on this subject for several months, do you really think those scientists will know more or understand more than a person who has dedicated decades of their life, all. day every day, to studying this subject and is continually looking for new knowledge and continually refining their methodology to produce ever better results?

What you say you seek already exists. Choose to ignore it at your own peril.

 

[Tom]

They are apples and apples. How many scientific papers are written about FTT and Tortoise hatchlings? How many papers are written about FTT and newborns? The veterinarian literature recapitulates scientific studies in humans. Until you can show me a scientific paper to support your idea, it is finger pointing to me.

It occurs to me that you might not be up to speed on this subject like some of our long term regular members are. I wrote this thread way back in 2011, and we obviously understand much more about it now than we did back then. I was assuming you had seen and read it based on your first post, but maybe you haven't? Here it is if you have not found it already:

"Hatchling Failure Syndrome"

I've heard this term for many years and I don't like it. Its a way to excuse our ignorance and failure. I will agree that an occasional hatchling is born that is just not going to make it no matter what anybody does, but MOST of them, if they make it full term and hatch, SHOULD survive and...

tortoiseforum.org

 

[Cgeyer]

I have mixed feelings about your responses. My CV and faculty positions speak for themselves. I feel that the senior members should embrace new ideas and not act in a defensive position. You need new blood on the forum. Your reactions only reinforce this idea.

 

[Tom]

I have mixed feelings about your responses. My CV and faculty positions speak for themselves. I feel that the senior members should embrace new ideas and not act in a defensive position. You need new blood on the forum. Your reactions only reinforce this idea.

I had another thought @Cgeyer ... This happens sometimes. Thoughts...

The citations and studies that you seek from sources that you consider reliable do not exist. YOU, however are a physician! You understand well the scientific method, how to control/eliminate variables, and how to write it all up correctly for peer review, though I don't know who your "peers" would be in this case. Why don't YOU do the study and write it all up at the end?

Let's get you a clutch of sulcata babies so you can form groups and house them in all the different ways we've been talking about. Interested? There are many ways we could go about this. We could get you a bunch from the people who start them dry and outside all day, and then another bunch that have been soaked and housed correctly from day one, but they would be genetically unrelated. When the dry started ones start dying off you could send them in for full necropsy and witness the nephron damage for yourself. To be scientific, you could sacrifice one or more of the healthy ones for internal organ comparisons of the results of the two methods.

I don't know any reputable breeders that would willingly start a clutch with some dry and some hydrated. We all already know how that will end up and its cruel to repeat it solely to convince a skeptic, so I don't know how we'd get identical genetics to do this study... In the past I have collected clutches from other breeders and then incubated and hatched them myself. If we found a breeder willing to part with a whole clutch you yourself could start them however you see fit for your own study from day one.

 

[Cgeyer]

Tom:

Please quote the literature!

Carl. I need a scientific paper as a reference.

 

[Tom]

I have mixed feelings about your responses. My CV and faculty positions speak for themselves. I feel that the senior members should embrace new ideas and not act in a defensive position. You need new blood on the forum. Your reactions only reinforce this idea.

What new idea has been introduced. I'm not seeing it. We already know what causes FTT in baby tortoises. It is directly and obviously attributable to how they are cared for upon hatching. This is not my opinion. This is a fact with thousands of examples to draw from.

We've come a long way trying to refute the old wrong information of past decades. Heck yes I will be defensive when someone comes along trying to undo that work, especially when their argument is baseless. You are trying to tell me/us that the sky is not blue if I don't have a citation for a study from a reputable peer reviewed journal. I don't have that citation Carl, but the sky is obviously blue. The only question is whether or not YOU can accept the fact that the sky is blue without someone else writing it down and having it reviewed in a scientific journal.

Tom:

Please quote the literature!

Carl. I need a scientific paper as a reference.

What literature from what source? There isn't any in regards to tortoise care. WE are inventing the literature. Us. Right here. This group. There is no University or biologist organization studying this, and likely never will be. Who would fund that and why?

This is something that has long bothered me about "scientists" and their need for citations. Someone somewhere has to invent or discover this new info. I can't cite something that has never been done before and is not known or understood by the scientific community. This is NEW info. It must be scrutinized on its own. THIS new info can be cited by future students and scientists down the road for use in their own related work, but as of now, there is nothing to cite. All that can be offered is what studies have been done, what methodologies were used, and then this info must be scrutinized on its own merits because there is no other related info to cite. Human and domesticated animal info simply doesn't apply because of the harsh and immediate natural selection that takes place in the wild that eliminates any genetic trait that would make an animal less fit for survival than its competitors.