Help (plugged cloaca)

[Marko123]

The stone is a bladder stone (urolith). Here are @Markw84's five factors for urolith formation:

1. Hydration
2. Specific habit of the individual tortoise in dumping/replacing water held. Some tortoise just seem to retain the habit of holding water longer in their system and therefore get higher concentration of uric acid building.
3. Amount of protein in diet. All uroliths found in tortoises are purine based. So a by-product of protein digestion. An excess of protein in the diet forces the tortoise to process more urates and if holding water, can lead to higher concentrations that will precipitate into the start of the urolith.
4. Temperature. Uric acid precipitates much more readily at lower temperatures. There is a big difference in solubility at 80° vs 65°. A Hermanns tortoise in the wild would normally be feeding and growing when temperatures are higher. In those times, the overnight low, and the ground temperatures are higher there than where you are and in fact, most of the US. Where a tortoise hides overnight is protected from the overnight low we see in weather data. But even that is about 60°-65° through most of their active season. That means, where the tortoise is hiding probably never subjects the tortoise to temps lower than 70° as a minimum during its active season. Feeding a tortoise in captivity in a colder environment, and allowing nighttime temps to drop lower than that can certainly lead to an increase in the formation of uroliths. So feeding through winter is a possible issue with temperature management.
5. The acidity of the gut also dramatically affects precipitation of urates into uroliths. Although in humans a High (alkaline) Ph gut can indeed lead to more uroliths, the uroliths in mammals are mostly calcium based. In tortoises all uroliths studies have been purine based. The reverse is true for purines - lower (acidic) Ph leads to greater precipitation of purine based urates (dramatically lowers solubility). So the types (Ph) of food and water available are also conditions to look at.

My guess is that your tortoise has had a very poor diet. If it is indeed 3-4 years old, it's way undersized. It's about the size of a 3-6 month old. Here's an excerpt on feeding from the care sheet. Pellet type food should only be given a couple of time per week.

Thanks! But he can't be 3-6 months old because he has been living with me for almost 2 years. I live in a big city and I'm struggling to even find the grass he likes. Once per week I give him an apple or banana because I have read that too many fruits can't be good for him