Play sand type

[Benjamin]

Earlier this year my chelonian partner, a vet who specializes in chelonia, informed me of a cb manouria impressa that died due to impacting on cypress mulch.
I use shredded leaves and pine needles now.

 

[Yvonne G]

Sorry to disagree with you Tom, but enteroliths in horses are not big sand balls. They are composed of excessive minerals in the diet eg. magnesium, phosphate, or calcium. It might have started with a little pebble or stone, but not sand. Sand DOES cause colic in horses and it happens in their stomach the same way...the sand falls down to the bottom of the stomach and does not make it back up to the exit.

 

[Jacqui]

Earlier this year my chelonian partner, a vet who specializes in chelonia, informed me of a cb manouria impressa that died due to impacting on cypress mulch.
I use shredded leaves and pine needles now.

Thank you Ben for coming forward with this.

 

[smarch]

Earlier this year my chelonian partner, a vet who specializes in chelonia, informed me of a cb manouria impressa that died due to impacting on cypress mulch.
I use shredded leaves and pine needles now.

how shredded do you make the leaves? I'm assuming they're not fresh leaves right? then my 'Nank really would try to munch the substrate! but it seems like a pretty good idea!

 

[smarch]

hmm I wonder,
I saw a picture of an episode of My Strange Addictions where the person was addicted to eating sand, I wonder if the doctor mentioned impaction and if that's a thing that can happen in humans, or kids more-so since if a parent's not watching a kid in a sandbox they could think its a good thing to eat...
The only other animal I've ever really heard of sand impactions is Bearded dragons, which is why they get carpets never sand.. but that was only through research because I want one in the future. Interesting that it happens to even horses... that's a heck of a lot of sand accidentally eaten!

 

[Yvonne G]

That's why you're never supposed to feed horses on the ground. They have a very discriminating prehensile lip, but its very hard for them to not get sand with their hay when eating off the ground.

 

[Tom]

Yvonne, I don't think we are disagreeing here. The vet said that it was mineralized sand. He explained that a lump of sand or gravel is the "base" and the minerals and incoming sand or gravel all sort of clump together. When viewing the big mineralized ball, you can see the sand grains encased in the precipitated minerals. So it seems that sand is at least a component of these things, but you are correct in that they are also made up of mineral deposits. I'm no expert, but I have a little experience with this. I'm just going by what the horse vet told me and what I saw. If you or someone else know more, I will bow out and learn from you.

 

[smarch]

I did a search to look up if its ever happened with children eating sand, but nothing really came up, so I suppose that's good, I guess I can assume by how it happens with horses it could theoretically happen to a person if they ate enough over time (like the person on my strange addiction).
Apparently sand impaction isn't all that uncommon in dogs either I found a few articles of dogs impacted, and elephants. Obviously different from a tortoise, but the super large visuals of cutting open horses and elephants to remove handfuls of sand is more than enough to cover up the sand in the sand box this weekend too!! (well Monday... its a crazy weekend here, but he wont be out on it again until its covered!).

as for the substrate inside he'll have the mulch for now, but I think when its time to get clean stuff in there i'll try soil. though i'm still interested in the leaves and pine needles idea!

 

[smarch]

This may be somewhat off topic, but I was thinking if the repti-sand I had way back at the beginning and it had "added calcium"... how is that supposed to help any reptile? I mean yes calcium is important, but they don't just absorb it from being on top of it! They have to eat the calcium... which end up leading right to what we're debating now. I don't get how they think that's a good/helpful idea!? I mean I did believe it was helpful in the beginning (the being on it not eating it), because it was calcium ... but thinking about it now it makes absolutely no sense...