Is my Russian’s shell healthy?

[clc0129]

Hello I just joined the forum today and was wondering if my tort’s shell and plastron is healthy. He didn’t have to good of care for a small portion of his life but recently I have been trying to take much better care of him, I noticed one small white spot at the top of his shell and wondered if anything was wrong. Also on his plastron there was also a small bit of what looked like peeling? So if there are any problems please let me know and how to treat them. Thank you!

Here are a couple of pictures

 

[katieandiggy]

The shell looks absolutely fine to me.
The beak however from that angle looks a little over grown. Can we see it from a different angle?

 

[RosemaryDW]

Welcome!

Is that a captive bred tortoise or a wild caught? In the U.S. they are usually wild caught and that’s what I’m guessing he is. He looks like he’s had a bunch of food lately (those lighter rings on the outside of the shell) which is not a problem.

It’s totally fine for him to have a ding on top; Russians scrape themselves up all the time. It won’t grow back but it’s not harmful.

Whatever that scraping was caused by on the plastron, it looks okay to me. If it’s damp or you can push it in with your finger, that is something you’d want to look into further.

In the second picture his beak looks very overgrown. Can you get a picture from the side or is that something you are already taking care of?

Have you read our Russian care sheet yet? https://tortoiseforum.org/threads/russian-tortoise-care-sheet.80698/. It’s a good place to start.

 

[clc0129]

Welcome!

Is that a captive bred tortoise or a wild caught? In the U.S. they are usually wild caught and that’s what I’m guessing he is. He looks like he’s had a bunch of food lately (those lighter rings on the outside of the shell) which is not a problem.

It’s totally fine for him to have a ding on top; Russians scrape themselves up all the time. It won’t grow back but it’s not harmful.

Whatever that scraping was caused by on the plastron, it looks okay to me. If it’s damp or you can push it in with your finger, that is something you’d want to look into further.

In the second picture his beak looks very overgrown. Can you get a picture from the side or is that something you are already taking care of?

Have you read our Russian care sheet yet? https://tortoiseforum.org/threads/russian-tortoise-care-sheet.80698/. It’s a good place to start.

Yes i am trying to take care of his beak i have tried natural methods such as cuttlebone but he doesn't even seem to touch it, do you have any suggestions? And yes as far as i know he is wild caught.

 

[RosemaryDW]

It may be hard for him to take a good bite of anything with that beak so I wouldn’t worry about the cuttlebone just now.

Use fingernail clippers on it; just a little piece at a time. The beak is similar to a fingernail; it doesn’t hurt the tortoise to trim it, it’s just scary to humans.

If you have a good reptile vet near you they can trim it down for you very quickly.

 

[clc0129]

ok thank you so much! I don't know how comfortable I am about trimming it myself so i will look into some reptile vets

 

[RosemaryDW]

Make sure your vet has done it before; lots of vets actually don’t know anything about reptiles.