Giving medicine to small tortoises

[nupek]

I have a young leopard tortoise, currently is around 10 cm in length and weights around 218 g. She is on antibiotics because of the mild respiratory system infection and those are administered orally. I need to give in total 7 doses, one every 3 days. Today we solved it after a long time by catching the neck on the sides (and blocking the head), opening her mouth and slipping the syringe (without the needle of course) inside. It was stressful and took a lot of time. Is it a safe way? Is there a better way? I would prefer not to stress her so much but I'm mostly concerned about damaging her as she is very small.

Thanks in advance for answering.

 

[Yvonne G]

Hi "nupek":

If there is a food that the tortoise will eat, you can inject the dose into the food.

 

[Talka]

Yep, cherry or grape tomatoes are great for this. Grassland tortoise food pellets mixed with medicine and a bit of water, maybe? Otherwise, holding the neck and prying their mouth open is the only other way I've heard of. If you have two people doing it, you can get good at it and do it in about a minute or less.
It once took almost 30 minutes to get Sheldon to behave (300 grams of tortoise and what a battle!) and he was rather cross with me for a few days, but they get over it, so don't worry. He's back to happy now, so I'm sure your little one will be too.

 

[Baoh]

I clip off the end of a needle such that the original beveled edge has been removed and the new tip is kind of hooked/curved, load the syringe, and use some surrogate to make sure it flows well. Then I clean the syringe and needle assembly, load the intended substance, and slip it into some gap in the beak (usually at the very front), gently turned the barrel so the needle rotates with it. This can either directly open the beak or cause the tortoise to sort of reflexively gag. I slip the needle very slightly deeper into the mouth and squirt material in carefully so the animal does not aspirate it. I also use this instead of other means of force-feeding when necessary.

You must be careful if you do this, but it can work well if you have a gentle hand.