Hello! New Mommy to a 6-8 yr old Red-Footed Tort. Rescued and shes not in the best shape......

[BeastMasterW00]

We just rescued a beautiful female 6-8 year old Red-Footed tortoise. She has very loose stool , was super in need of a good soak, and COVERED in tiny flies. We've been reading, watching videos, doing all we can to learn everything possible about this species so we can give her the best home possible. Any recommendations for getting her poop solid ??? I've taken all of the cypress mulch they had in her tank out and given it thorough cleaning. She also has some decent puramiding occurring. She's the sweetest thing you'd ever meet and we only want the best for her. Thank you for reading and any help you can provide!!

 

[BeastMasterW00]

Pyramiding* sorry stupid phone changed it

 

[wellington]

Hello and Welcome. Good for you for taking her in and wanting to give her a better life. I think if you improve her diet, temps humidity along with warm soaks for a while, the poops will probably also improve. Check out the tortoiselibrary. It's a great site for RF and its from one of our members

 

[Yvonne G]

Hi, and welcome to the Forum!

There's some pretty good reading at the Tortoise Library on redfooted tortoises. If you want to find it on your own, it's down at the bottom right on the Forum home page.

 

[ZEROPILOT]

Welcome

 

[allegraf]

It will take time, but they are amazingly resilient! Glad you got her on the right path.

 

[BeastMasterW00]

Hello and Welcome. Good for you for taking her in and wanting to give her a better life. I think if you improve her diet, temps humidity along with warm soaks for a while, the poops will probably also improve. Check out the tortoiselibrary. It's a great site for RF and its from one of our members

Thank you so much for the warm welcome and advice!!

 

[BeastMasterW00]

Welcome

Thank you!!

 

[BeastMasterW00]

It will take time, but they are amazingly resilient! Glad you got her on the right path.

Thank you! She's such a sweet baby. My son is already so in love with her. He's been asking for a turtle since he was 5 1/2 , he's 13 now. Tortoise was Definetly the way to go for us and All just seemed to fall into place when I saw her posted on Facebook of all places. Loving the site! Thank you all so much for being here and being so welcoming to a newbie.

 

[BeastMasterW00]

Hi, and welcome to the Forum!

There's some pretty good reading at the Tortoise Library on redfooted tortoises. If you want to find it on your own, it's down at the bottom right on the Forum home page.

Thank you for the link!!! Can't wait to read thru it all.

 

[jockma]

She may need 2 soaks a day to rehydrate, mine was in bad shape when I took him in and I did 3 soaks daily. The loose stool dehydrates them pretty rapidly so you want to make sure she's getting enough water. The stool should work itself out after she's put on a good diet for a while. I feed pumpkin to firm up my RF's poops. Maybe also consider getting a poop sample to test for parasites.

Congrats on your new tortoise and thank you for making an effort to improve this sweet girl's life!

 

[MPRC]

Congrays, I love my redfoots. Healthy foods with lots of fiber will help firm things up. Pumpkin and squash are usually a good choice. What sorts of foods are you feeding her currently?

 

[BeastMasterW00]

Congrays, I love my redfoots. Healthy foods with lots of fiber will help firm things up. Pumpkin and squash are usually a good choice. What sorts of foods are you feeding her currently?

Currently she is getting a daily mix of Kale, cactus, a little banana and blueberry ( these were her primary diet there and if mixed with her greens gets her to eat them lol ) We are working on some boiled chicken once a week ( tiny amount ) and recently added dandelion. Thank you for the welcome!!!

 

[BeastMasterW00]

She may need 2 soaks a day to rehydrate, mine was in bad shape when I took him in and I did 3 soaks daily. The loose stool dehydrates them pretty rapidly so you want to make sure she's getting enough water. The stool should work itself out after she's put on a good diet for a while. I feed pumpkin to firm up my RF's poops. Maybe also consider getting a poop sample to test for parasites. Is canned pumpkin okay until they are back in season?

Congrats on your new tortoise and thank you for making an effort to improve this sweet girl's life!

Just found a great exotics vet so will be taking a sample in soon. Good to know on the soaks, we've been laughing that she gets to enjoy our tub more than we do. She LOVES a gentle shower.

 

[jockma]

Currently she is getting a daily mix of Kale, cactus, a little banana and blueberry ( these were her primary diet there and if mixed with her greens gets her to eat them lol ) We are working on some boiled chicken once a week ( tiny amount ) and recently added dandelion. Thank you for the welcome!!!

Good job! I can tell you're doing your research which is beautiful for me to hear haha. If the chicken is too difficult to manage you can feed eggs, boiled or scrambled. I boil eggs and smash them whole, my RF eats it shell and all. He started getting violent towards boiled eggs because he decided he didn't like it anymore so I scramble eggs shell and all now. If yours doesn't eat boiled, try scrambled. Hopefully she's not a diva like mine

IIRC kale and cactus pads can hinder calcium absorption due to the high concentration of oxalates. I wouldn't stop feeding them because they're nutritious and great for poop problems, but I wouldn't feed them every day due to the importance of calcium for the tortoise's shell and bone health.

RFs eat more fruit than most in the wild so adding some bananas and berries to trick her into eating is fine (I did the same thing ) but I think you've found the cause of the loose stools. Too much fruit = runny poop. Hopefully you can switch her off the fruit-heavy diet they were giving her, get some firm poops out of her

 

[allegraf]

Hate to be the one...but eggs? How is that a part of the natural diet? Scrambled or hard boiled? I'm not trying to be difficult or start anything, but...

 

[jockma]

Hate to be the one...but eggs? How is that a part of the natural diet? Scrambled or hard boiled? I'm not trying to be difficult or start anything, but...

It's a convenient way to feed animal protein. In the wild they usually eat bugs, in captivity if people can't keep an ample supply of bugs for feeding then boiled chicken, eggs, cat/dog food is used.

 

[cdmay]

I've fed boiled eggs to my laying females in that past. They do seem to relish them too.
But the messy poops later...yuck! I stopped this practice many years ago.
The protein 'needs' of red-footed tortoises has been way overblown on the various forums and in hobbyist magazine articles. The reality is that although they do consume animal remains every time they encounter them in the wild, the consumption of carrion (usually only little pieces left behind by predators) constitutes a small percentage of the overall diet.
The items of animal protein most often identified in wild red-foot scats is stuff like bird feathers and skin, lizard skin and bones, termites and things like these.
So in reality the tortoises are not eating anything like the chicken, cat food, dog food, shrimp and numerous other super rich (and fatty) foods that keepers regularly offer their tortoises.

Nice job so far BeastMaster. Here's an idea, when you do offer the boiled chicken, try to extract as much of the grease/ fat out of the meat as you can by pressing it between layers of paper towels. Then break up the chicken into some good quality greens, or romaine/dark green leaf lettuce, etc. This way you'll be getting her used to consuming food items that are better for her.
Try to cut back on both the kale and boiled chicken down the road.

 

[Madkins007]

Ah, the eternal diet thing. This is a real challenge with exotic animals, and even pets, domestic animals, and humans. What IS the perfect and proper diet for a given species? What they eat in the wild is what they are used to, but even wild animals often suffer dietary ailments.

Redfoots are a great example. Field notes almost always mention eating proteins and weird things. Like Carl said, this includes bird feet and beaks, but also includes fox scat, and lots of termites. The surprising thing, to me, is that the largest and most consistent finding is butterflies! Its kinda weird to think of the lowly tortoise as a significant butterfly predator! The problem is that too many people and even well-meaning authors, have interpreted ;eating some forms of protein' as 'eating real meat' and include meat as part of the diet.

Now, we are not going to give our torts butterflies and chicken feet, so the question becomes what is an appropriate substitute? This gets tricky since we really don't know what their real protein needs are based on hard research. We can make some darn good educated guesses based on what we know about other species and the answer may be a bit surprising... they probably don't need any meat proteins. in captivity

You see, the places most tortoise species like this live are warm, humid, and experience a lot of rain (even though the Amazon is in the middle of a pretty horrific drought). This washes the nutrients out of the thin soil, so the plants tend to be a low in nutritional value, except the seeds and fruits which we will get to in a moment. A lot like the Venus Flytrap, they eat meat because they cannot get proteins, etc., from the soil or plant life.

Most of the foods we have access to, on the other hand, are pretty nutrient rich, including being high in proteins. (FYI- there IS a difference between plant and meat proteins, there just isn't any evidence that tortoise biology cares about the difference.)

So... DO THEY NEED MEAT PROTEIN? Almost certainly not, but an occasional SMALL 'meaty' treat may be good insurance. I would suggest a low-fat option, like good quality diet cat food (canned or kibble), a little poultry, or (if you are OK with the bowels they cause) some egg or oily fish. Home-made jerky made from some low-fat meat would probably be a great treat for these guys if you are into that.

Fruits. This is a really fascinating element. Field researchers find that redfoots eat a LOT of fruit- 70% or more of their diet is fruit when they can find it. (Fruiting seasons in the tropics are different than in most of the US- different trees fruit at different times, so they may not be a fruiting tree within a mile now, and the next week may rain fruit on you.) When most American authors hear 'fruit' they think 'sweet and juicy plant things'. When a scientist says 'fruit', they mean the 'fruiting body' of a plant- where the ovaries are fertilized, store nutrients, and prepare to create a new plant. Squash, pumpkins, cucumbers, peppers, peas, beans, nuts, and grains are all actually fruits (but tortoises cannot and should not eat every kind of fruit, so don't go tossing hot peppers in there!)

Tropical plants put most of their effort and energy in fruiting- that is where they put most of the meager nutrients they can suck out of the ground, so most tropical animals depend on fruits. Most of the fruits a wild redfoot eats are figs, cactus fruit, and a huge amount of stuff from plants most of us have never heard of. One tastes like a hard sour cherry, another is described as 'potato like'- hardly the sweet stuff we are used to. These fruits are not as full of simple sugars as our grocery store fruits, but have a lot more calcium, protein, and other nutrients.

How do we use this information? Basically, we feed our tortoises a nice, colorful mixed salad. Some bell pepper, some squash, mushrooms, peas, and the like- in whole form when possible or cut just enough to help smaller torts get a good bite on them.

 

[cdmay]

Excellent info Madkins.