Fuchs&Bunnie
New Member
- Joined
- Aug 10, 2014
- Messages
- 3
Hello everyone! We are a couple of tortoise parents in New York. We've been reading the forum since we've gotten our first Greek more than a year ago, and have aquired much useful information from the postings here to help get us started. Thank you for maintaining a great forum!
It finaly came to a point that we feel we need to reach out and ask for help, since searching online did not yield anything useful. And here is the situation we have:
On Friday we received our new Greek addition from a very reputable breeder. The new baby came in very active and alert. Her weight in came out normal and she looked very healthy. Only thing we noticed was the left side of her beak didn't close completely and had a little hole. We gave her a bath and set her down in her new enclosure to roam around. It was until feeding time that we noticed that she was having trouble eating. She couldn't open her beak at all. All she did was trying to squeeze her little tongue through the gap on the left side to lick the food. We were horrified and we took her to the vet immediately.
The vet looked at her and determinded that her beak wasn't stucked. She was able to open a paperthin gap. He was hesitated about prying the beak open concerned that it could injure her. He gave us a pack of Oxbow Critical Care and a tiny syringe and said to try to fed her with that and see if she can eventually work it out herself.
On saturday we tried to hand feed her with very very tiny pieces of green by sliding it into the gap on her beak. It took her 30 min to use her tongue to draw in 2 tiny pieces. Afterward we tried giving her the liquid food with the syringe. She was so upset because she couldn't get to the food she desparately wanted to that she refused the liquid food and went and burrowed herself.
We've talked to the breeder and he told us that the baby had been taken out of the incubator for 4 weeks and was housed with a group of other hatchlings, which he had fed with solid food. He didn't notice the beak problem when he send her out to us. And since she looked healthy so she must have been able to eat some how. We are mystified as how she was able to survive the past 4 weeks seeing how she can't even get food into her mouth. The breeder had offer to exchange the baby. However, we are unwilling to send her back since she will most likely be put down. It's heartbreaking seeing such a cute little tort fight to survive because nature played a crude joke on her.
So we are wondering if any tortoise expert here can give us some advice or pointer concerning this situation. Have anyone had experience with beak deformaty? Can there be any possible surgical solution for such a young baby? If it's a beak problem, what can be done? Or if it's a jaw muscle problem, what can be done?
We are attaching a couple pictures here for reference.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
It finaly came to a point that we feel we need to reach out and ask for help, since searching online did not yield anything useful. And here is the situation we have:
On Friday we received our new Greek addition from a very reputable breeder. The new baby came in very active and alert. Her weight in came out normal and she looked very healthy. Only thing we noticed was the left side of her beak didn't close completely and had a little hole. We gave her a bath and set her down in her new enclosure to roam around. It was until feeding time that we noticed that she was having trouble eating. She couldn't open her beak at all. All she did was trying to squeeze her little tongue through the gap on the left side to lick the food. We were horrified and we took her to the vet immediately.
The vet looked at her and determinded that her beak wasn't stucked. She was able to open a paperthin gap. He was hesitated about prying the beak open concerned that it could injure her. He gave us a pack of Oxbow Critical Care and a tiny syringe and said to try to fed her with that and see if she can eventually work it out herself.
On saturday we tried to hand feed her with very very tiny pieces of green by sliding it into the gap on her beak. It took her 30 min to use her tongue to draw in 2 tiny pieces. Afterward we tried giving her the liquid food with the syringe. She was so upset because she couldn't get to the food she desparately wanted to that she refused the liquid food and went and burrowed herself.
We've talked to the breeder and he told us that the baby had been taken out of the incubator for 4 weeks and was housed with a group of other hatchlings, which he had fed with solid food. He didn't notice the beak problem when he send her out to us. And since she looked healthy so she must have been able to eat some how. We are mystified as how she was able to survive the past 4 weeks seeing how she can't even get food into her mouth. The breeder had offer to exchange the baby. However, we are unwilling to send her back since she will most likely be put down. It's heartbreaking seeing such a cute little tort fight to survive because nature played a crude joke on her.
So we are wondering if any tortoise expert here can give us some advice or pointer concerning this situation. Have anyone had experience with beak deformaty? Can there be any possible surgical solution for such a young baby? If it's a beak problem, what can be done? Or if it's a jaw muscle problem, what can be done?
We are attaching a couple pictures here for reference.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
