Inactive, non-hiding Greek Tortoise - Normal?

[akbecker]

I've had this Greek tortoise since last summer, and she's never been real active. I didn't get her set-up perfected until this Spring. View at http://www.tortoiseforum.org/threads/new-russian-tortoise-enclosure-outdoors.92603/
She's in the second post of pictures, in the L-shaped wood enclosure, she's pictured in the last picture.

She doesn't seem really active, and on top of which it makes me nervous that she doesn't really hide or use hides. I've tried deep, dug out hides with wood on top and then re-buried with an entrance, pots, half logs. I've tried putting her in the hides to try to "train" her. I've tried observing where she hides and then building a hide around her - and when I do that, she moves. During the cooler months when she was in the indoor set-up, she seemed content burrowing completely under the hay, but outside, I worry that's enough cover. Especially on the occasions when it rains.

Lately, I thought she had shell rot, but after posting pictures the consensus was that it was old. I treated it, since its harmless. She gets a soaking one a week - and since I have had her, she has NEVER gone to the bathroom while being soaked. She's super shy, so I try not to handle her much, since when I put her down from being handled, she doesn't seem to move for like 5 minutes.

I've been weighing her, and she has lost 1 ounce in 1 week, that seems like a lot. She has lots of food growing in the pen, and I've seen her eat it before, so I'm not sure if she's not eating or what the deal is.

Thoughts?

 

[Jlant85]

Hm.... It might be just her her personality who knows... but lets focus on her weight... If she's not eating the temp could be the problem... Might be too cold for her still... Ever thought of trying the baby food soak?

 

[Yellow Turtle01]

Maybe you should she a herp vet. Definitely go if she continues to lose weight. Some tortoises have phases of super hyper active days and slow, sleepy day, but she shouldn't lose weight if she's just sitting.

 

[Yvonne G]

One thing that we sometimes forget to mention is stones. Tortoises that have been kept very dry tend to grow stones and this eventually shows up as lethargy and not wanting to eat. Unfortunately, the only way to know for sure is an expensive x-ray.

 

[tglazie]

I know this is an older thread, but I had several questions, given that I've had this problem before myself. Granted, it was about fifteen years ago, when I was trying to find a mate for my old male Graecus, but here goes. I got this one wild caught female Greek tortoise from a friend who had ordered her online through some fella posting wild torts on Kingsnake.com. When he got her, she hadn't been eating. He started to panic, so he brought her to me. When he first notified me, before I'd seen her, I was excited that she might be a match for Graecus. Unfortunately, she wasn't. She looked like a Lebanese origin buxtoni according to pictures by Chris and locality specific pictures on Google, and she had a shell with yellow ground color and black striations that looked nothing like Graecus' jet black ground color with chocolate brown radiating lines, so I figured it wasn't going to work between them. Needless to say, she was also very large (nine and a half inches in length) and obviously very old.

I set her up in four by eight enclosure of her own, with a centrally located shelter dug out and filled with peat moss. Despite this, she would always head to a corner and sleep there. Every night, I would move her into her house. Some night, she would get up, in the middle of the damned night, and return to one of the corners. I caught her doing this one night in the rain when I went out to see if the enclosures were flooding.

What was worse was the fact that in the first four days, she didn't eat anything, and she was losing weight, about an ounce and a half during that first week. So, I took her into the vet. I saved a stool sample in the fridge I'd acquired on a second day soak, which I brought with me. Turns out, she had a mild case of worms, plus she was egg bound. After an oxytocin injection, the vet sent us home, tortoise and five healthy looking eggs in tow. After six months in the incubator, none of them hatched.

I eventually got her to eat, after two weeks, and she only ate a very small amount at a time, so she didn't gain her weight back as quickly as I would have hoped, and I eventually, after a very worrisome winter (I didn't hibernate her, given her state, and my uncertainty over her subspecies' abilities to hibernate), got her to use the shelter. Unfortunately, once she started using the shelter, she would never leave it. Every time I would bring her from the shelter to try to feed her, she would sit out nervously, eat a few bites, then run back into the shelter. After the incident with the eggs, I dug her a nice laying area like I did with my female marginated. Sure enough, one day in early summer, she started digging nest holes, and she laid five more eggs, all of which proved to be infertile after incubating for eight months.

After another year, she started showing signs of improvement. She started exploring her habitat, finishing her meals (which still consisted of a modest amount of collards, hawksbit, mulberry, various clover, and occasional dandelion and romaine and other weeds and flowers in season; my tortoise, Graecus, was two inches shorter than she was lengthwise, but would consume two and a half times as much food), and defecating regularly during her soaks, which she still hated, running against the walls of the bus tub every time I placed her in it. Later that year, during the autumn, my friend came over and noticed how well she was doing. He asked if he could take her back. Knowing this was bound to be a temporary foster situation, I said yes. She is his only tortoise, and though she is still very shy (not at all gregarious like my beloved Graecus, who emerges from hiding as soon as the stink of intruding human befouls his nostrils so that he might make a show of himself and demand food), she continues to do well and, interestingly, continues to lay infertile eggs, like clockwork, once a year in early June. Only once has one of the eggs actually produced a hatchling, but that baby was, unfortunately, incredibly weak upon emerging from the egg after four and a half months incubation at a temperature fluctuating between an eighty four degree night time low and an eighty nine degree daytime high (standard temperature for incubation; works with a hovabator against the room temperature of my home, which isn't air conditioned during the day, but well insulated from the blistering summer heat).

So, I know that was a long story, but my questions are is she wild caught? How old would you say she is? If she's wild caught, is she larger than the typical four to five inch wild caught animals folks see these days? Have you taken her to see a vet? Some wild caught Greeks don't respond well to captivity and need to be cradled through their first year. Also, if she is captive bred, do you have any idea how she could have ended up this way? Have you seen her defecate at all? If you have, collect it as a stool sample to take to the vet. The loss in weight could be a number of things, but when you take her to the vet, you need to be able to rule out worms or other parasites. You say you've seen her eating. Does she eat very much compared to other tortoises you may have kept? I feel that healthy tortoises usually have healthy appetites, and usually, even the shy ones who are healthy eat well. I have a little marginated I recently acquired from Chris, and she is very shy, closing up in her shell for three to five minutes if my shadow goes over her, but once I put down food and step away, she's an insatiable pig.

Bottom line, her weight loss is a matter of concern and needs to be addressed. Get a stool sample and see the vet about testing for parasites. She may not have them, but it is always best to rule it out. And yeah, some tortoises never grow accustomed to human interaction, though with time, many of them do get better about it. I'm very lucky in that most of mine are extremely gregarious. Graecus is the most gregarious tortoise I've ever seen, aside from some especially friendly sulcatas, and all of my adult margies are extremely sociable as well, emerging from their hiding places to be fed without any physical urging.

T.G.