Failure to Thrive

[dd33]

Might as well wade into an argument, lol. Every tortoise baby (less than a year old) I have sent for necropsy - a total of 3 so far - has died of a disease or infection. And in each case, it was a different pathogen. I regret not sending others, because I don’t know why those particular hatchings died. I have observed “failure to thrive” cases in both tortoises I’ve bought and ones I have hatched. The ones I hatched were set up from birth using methods similar to what Tom recommends.

I strongly suspect that the rate of infections or diseases in such cases is being grossly underestimated. Most people don’t send them for necropsy to find out. Overall “hatchling failure” might be a catch-all for a variety of causes of death (husbandry or disease). Congenital issues are likely a minority of cases. In cases where congenital issues are common or a large number of hatchlings are just “weak”, I would consider a problem with the mother (e.g. disease or poor nutrition) or perhaps an egg incubation problem (e.g. too hot, or lacking temp fluctuation, etc).

Steve, I am glad you brought this up. I wanted to say something similar. There are a LOT of different tortoise diseases out there and very few people are looking for them. There have been several papers published in the last 10 years or so looking at prevalence of disease in Turtles and Tortoises in Europe. One I read recently found something like 47% of the animals tested had at least one pathogen.
It is too easy to say that a hatchling wasn't started right, or that it died from a "respiratory infection" or it was impacted. All that is BS without a necropsy and PCR work looking for the real reason.

 

[Blackdog1714]

Tammy, why don't you take your cup of tea and go sit on your porch?!

🍿🕶🕐

 

[TammyJ]

Ok. Here I go again with my brilliant analysis and unilateral conclusion. Failure To Thrive is not a disease in itself, of course. It is one of two things: either the animal was born with a problem that would likely or inevitably cause it to die at some point, or it was born ok, but was badly cared for to the extent that it became sick with an infection or simple dehydration or other preventable cause, leading to its death. In either case, it's Failure To Thrive, no doubt about it.

 

[LeoTheWaywardTortoise]

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

Tammy, please stop being so hard on Tammy. I enjoy her sense of humor. 😉

 

[jsheffield]

{contemplates sticking hand into blender or participating in this thread}

...

{declines to do either}

 

[SinLA]

{contemplates sticking hand into blender or participating in this thread}

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{declines to do either}

Same, dude. Same...