Help needed

MenagerieGrl

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She has lived in my back garden for over 2 yrs .. I have no dogs, no cows or any other animals that might have caused her injury. The CCTV footage shows that she was fine earlier this morning. Struggled to move after being in the sun on one spot for nearly an hour.
If you haven't yet read the thread......she had laid an egg this afternoon which confuses me more as she has no mate.

The big question is to I have her put down considering the injury?
So, I would not concentrate on the egg laying... I had a Chinese Brown Goose, Lucy, such a lovely goose, let her out of the pen on a Sunday morn, all was fine with the world. I had found that she had laid an egg later in the morn. Later on in the day, she was acting pecular, kind of lethargic. By the evening the world was NOT right. The next day I took her to my Avian Vet, on the other side of the county. They took her in, did an exam, which was inconclusive. She was given pain med's, and I left her there for x-rays later on. I was called 2 hours later, they told me she had "crashed". The next day they did a necropsy, and was told she had experienced a perforated bowel/intestines, possibly a week before. Long story short, her whole insides had turned septic, which had puzzeled me immensly. How could this be....? She had JUST laid an egg the day before, I was told that the "systems" are separate and it was not uncommon for something like this to happpen.
I would concentrate on the shell Damage!
Not being there, In my opinion that poor creature got crushed, or attacked by a wild animal.
 

AgataP

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Aug 18, 2020
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Seattle, WA
Did your tortoise have these marks before the injury? The lower image that screen shot looks like a fresh pointy injury.
I know you mentioned you watched 3h of the video and nothing there. The lower part of the sell with a bigger “chip” is looking a bit like an impact wound. Hope your tortoise recovers quickly. Sending positive energy your way.

8D74675C-C86F-4714-A9D4-AB3DD25C39AD.jpeg92657D71-7B81-4723-9198-875ED7A6CA6C.jpeg
 

zovick

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Nov 17, 2013
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Did your tortoise have these marks before the injury? The lower image that screen shot looks like a fresh pointy injury.
I know you mentioned you watched 3h of the video and nothing there. The lower part of the sell with a bigger “chip” is looking a bit like an impact wound. Hope your tortoise recovers quickly. Sending positive energy your way.

View attachment 333130View attachment 333131
Yes, this whole thing looks like trauma rather than egg-laying disarticulation to me also.

Unfortunately, the OP has gone silent since 5 hours after joining the TFO last Friday. I am wondering if he/she figured out what happened to the tortoise and doesn't want to say or if the tortoise has died and the OP doesn't want to make that known.

@rrahim Can you give us an update, please?
 

Gijoux

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Did you see this injury before she laid the egg or after? I have a large Chersina female that, after laying her first egg, had similar, but far less extreme bleeding along that same line. Now, it was NOWHERE near as bad - but was bleeding. Chersina's shells have to flex quite a bit to allow an egg to pass. I think the injury's suggested by @zovick and others are far more likely, but when I first saw this image, it did remind me of my one female after her first egg. Outside chance this happened when laying the egg. You will see that the egg is MUCH larger than the opening at the anal scutes.

And to confirm - yes....they can lay eggs without being exposed to males. If she has never been near a male, it won't be fertile, but I would incubate it anyway.
I wonder if there were other eggs out in the garden where she had been?
 

TammyJ

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I guess this is another one of those "up in the air..." endings.
 

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