Pyramiding

[Terry Allan Hall]

Did some further research, found these:
http://www.turtlestuff.com/pyramid.html
http://africantortoise.com/pyramiding_in_tortoises.htm
http://www.chelonia.org/Articles/Pyramiding.htm

 

[TylerStewart]

Tyler-
The comment about raising sulcatas and yellowfoots side by side in PHX. That is misleading or inacurate?? Just from reading on this forum, yellowfoots don't like the conditions that you would raise a sulcata in...such has bright sunlight in an open pen. And visevera, a sulcata would not be happy in a well shaded dark pen. With different habits, I don't think the two did the same things at the same time of day.

It's not misleading or inaccurate, and I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything. I agree that yellowfoots shouldn't be raised the same way as a sulcata. All I'm saying is that I know of some that were raised together, and one species pyramided and the other didn't. Unless you specifically search for it, it's difficult to find photos of a pyramided yellowfoot. As far as the activity and the time of day, they might have been slightly off in the active times... They were both in very little humidity with a water dish provided, I'm sure they both slept at night, most active in the morning and evening, so it wouldn't have been that far off. My only point was that some species are more prone to it than others, which is clearly the case. Never seen a pyramided elongated, either, that I can think of.

 

[Tom]

For the reverse question... simply you grew them too slow... and to do this you must have restricted food... which therefore restricts the nutrients... which leads to stunted badly grown tortoises...

Also with the temps you get and the restricted food... i would have been bathing more... as with less food there is less water content... and you live in a hot climate so i personally would have been bathing everyday...

So now you are saying that in addition to growing them too fast, growing them too slow ALSO causes them to pyramid? So they pyramid if you feed them too much AND they pyramid if you feed them too little?

They were fed a varied diet in reasonable amounts daily. They were also allowed to graze all day on weeds and grass. With 3-4 soaks a week and plenty of "wet" food I don't think you'll make me believe they were dehydrated.

Have you seen the pics of my adults? Are they "badly grown"? No one else has been able to answer whether they are permanently stunted or just growing slower than the average sulcata. My adults certainly SEEM healthier and more active than most of the sulcatas I have seen of their age.

Maybe you, or anyone else, can explain to me the 50-60 pound 5-6 year olds that were free fed dog kibble and the only water they got was from puddles when it rained or weeds that popped up in their yards. They got NO calcium supplementation and they were smooth as a wild caught. Oh, by the way I saw two of these in Florida and several just outside of New Orleans. I have never seen one of these in CA, AZ, UT or anywhere else dry. The smooth ones we've recently seen from AZ all can be explained with humidity.

 

[stells]

I haven't said growing them too fast... if there is such a thing... causes them to pyramid... i have never played by the rules on the grow them slow theory... sorry... thats part of the 15 year old caresheet you said i was like... that doesn't stick with me

Tom you are the one that keeps telling us they grew badly... so why are you asking me if i have seen the pictures? but yes i have seen the pics... no they aren't too badly grown... but you are the one with the obssesion with them being badly grown here... not me...

If you don't believe they were dehydrated then why the big thing on humidity... when humidity helps to keep a tortoise hydrated?

You asked an opinion... again i gave one... again you got defensive... why ask for an opinion in the first place... if you aren't going to like the reply's...

 

[kbaker]

I haven't said growing them too fast... if there is such a thing... causes them to pyramid... i have never played by the rules on the grow them slow theory... sorry... thats part of the 15 year old caresheet you said i was like... that doesn't stick with me

Tom you are the one that keeps telling us they grew badly... so why are you asking me if i have seen the pictures? but yes i have seen the pics... no they aren't too badly grown... but you are the one with the obssesion with them being badly grown here... not me...

If you don't believe they were dehydrated then why the big thing on humidity... when humidity helps to keep a tortoise hydrated?

You asked an opinion... again i gave one... again you got defensive... why ask for an opinion in the first place... if you aren't going to like the reply's...

Tom can correct me if I am wrong...Tom and I were looking at increasing humidity because of the direct effect on the outer shell. Dan pulled Tom into this when Dan was going into another direction which confused the situation.
Hydration was a given or more like, we did not see our tortoises as dehydrated.

I think Tom would agree, there is no debate here. A healthy tortoise needs to be hydrated and with the needed nutrition, can grow a smooth shell. The problem is people want definant temp, amount, measurable hydration, food type, speed/time...its all a balancing act. This is one reason caresheets do not work.

What needs to be done is to show people how to tell if their tortoise is hydrated (and other things) and to show them ways to keep them that way. I know its not easy to do this.





Actually what Dan has said works with what Tom is trying to do. One example is stopping pyramiding after it starts. It can be done, but it depends on what is going on inside the tortoise. Is the tortoise getting the needed nurtrition? Is it processing it well? If the tortoise has perminant organ failure, no- you can't stop it. If you can get the tortoise's organs to recover then sure, you have a chance to stop it from pyramiding.

Like I said- no debate. We want the same things and what Tom is experimenting with and what Dan has said are all part of the same puzzle.

You can lead a tortoise to water, but you can't make him drink.

 

[Tom]

This doesn't have anything to do with your question Danny. IMHO...if you can't answer a question.... of any kind...I can't imagine who else could. To me you're a walking encyclopedia.
I have absolutely NO experience with tortoises of any kind. Pio is only 3 years old, and that makes me a novice compared to any of you. When Pio was 1 month old I put him in the planted vivarium. He has dry substrate...dry, with only plants misted once a day to bring humidity into his viv. But I have done what Vicki said. I pack his hide, which is soaked in water for a half hour every week, with long fiber moss that I wet, squeeze out and fluff up. But he has to dig his way into the hide and is then incased in the damp moss. He really got no exercise for the first year of his life as he only ate and then went into his hide. The food he got was what Terry K. told me to feed him....you all know what that is. He is really very smooth so far. He rarely gets protein. So what made him grow so smooth?
My friend has two sulcata's since they were 2 months old. They only went out for 4 or less months out of the whole year. She feeds them escarole, spring mix and rose of Sharon...I don't think she ever gave them hay , or whatever they're supposed to eat. In the winter they live in their own room in her house ...with lights hanging from the ceiling, and a heater of some kind. I don't know how old they are, but they are so big that have to be taken in with a dolly and have a big dog house for a hide when outside. After reading all the posts on sulcata's it seems she does everything wrong. I don't think she ever gave them humidity of any kind, and her house has dry heat in the winter. They never had a humid hide to go in. Dogs run all over the yard with them too, mastiff mixes. For being raised that way, they don't have that much pyramiding.

Terry, I'm glad you are participating here. I think you sell yourself short in the knowledge/experience department.

The tortoise in that pic is mildly pyramided kind of like my Bert. In that pic the ground in the enclosed backyard is fairly damp. I'll bet if someone set a humidity gauge on thew ground out there, it would be pretty high. I've seen it often when someone says things are fairly dry and then when you look in to it you find all sorts of humidity. The forum member from AZ who posted the pic of the perfectly smooth yearling comes to mind. He had them on a dry substrate in a very dry part of the country. After a few questions we found out he used a swamp cooler half of the year, soaked daily, and had other reptile cages and their accompanying humidity in a closed room.

I'd love it if some forum members that have grassy, planted, closed in (4 walls), well irrigated backyards would go out there and set a humidity meter on the ground. My parents have a backyard like that and I can FEEL the humidity on a warm day back there. Next time I'm down there, I'll have to remember to bring a gauge.

---

I was just trying to get someone close to coming up with what humidity affected inside a tortoise's body to prevent pyramiding.

Well here goes. After the study that was done supposedly showing that humidity affected whether a tortoise pyramided or not, someone did another study about what it was that humidity did for a tortoise. I'm pretty sure but not positive it was published in Radiata. They found that hatchling tortoises dehydrated extremely quickly when feed a mainly weed diet (most is low in moisture) and if your giving a dry supplement, even worse. They were finding that a hatchling tortoise can dehydrate over night in a regular set-up (no humid hide). So unless a tortoise is drinking a ton of water and getting a high moisture diet in a regular set-up they were dehydrating every night. This dehydration caused the internal organs (liver and kidneys) to slowly become less effective (causing irreversable damage) in doing what they are supposed to be doing (processing vitamins and minerals and cleaning for the liver and eliminating waste for the kidneys). This slowly but steadily prevents the body from utilising the vitamins and minerals that the body is taking in. So you think you are doing everything right and giving your tortoise what it needs and in the right amount, but as the tortoise keeps getting dehydrated every night and organ function is going down you would have to be upping the vitamins and minerals to counter act this. They were testing blood calcium levels during this study.
So what they found was that if you used a humid hide you would prevent your hatchling (larger tortoises don't have this problem as they hold more water) from dehydrating over night and damaging it's internal organs. That would let the tortoise use what supplements it was getting without having to give large amounts. So it's always good to know why exactly something works and what it's doing.
So basicly you are trying to keep your hatchling from dehydrating and damaging internal organs.

Danny

Danny, I have nothing but the highest respect for you, but this just doesn't add up. So you're telling me that every single (Okay, there have been a tiny fraction that weren't pyramided.) captive raised Leopard and Sulcata over the last 30 years has "irreversible" liver and kidney damage caused by chronic dehydration? The damage is so severe that their organs can't function properly to the point of inability to properly assimilate calcium in the shell and bones? So they pyramid as babies, but somehow survive this terrible irreversible organ damage, then go on to grow up to be healthy 100 pound adults and produce 3-5 clutches of fertile eggs every year? This does not make logical sense to me, but I can't tell you you are wrong. The next time I hear of a pyramided Leopard or sulcata dying I will take it to my reptile veterinarian friend and have him thoroughly examine the liver and kidneys. He's very in to all this stuff too, so I know he'll do it for me. I've anyone within driving distance of me hears of anyone with a sick or dying Sulcata or Leopard of any age, please PM me. Put it in the fridge (not the freezer) ASAP after death. I know its morbid, but how else can you get specimens for dissection. This is something that can be easily investigated.

In my case, 12 years ago, my babies got soaked 4 times a week for 20-30 minutes and ate "wet" food from the grocery store 3-5 times a week. The other days they got cactus, weeds, fresh grass, flowers, etc... They had dry substrate, hot basking spots and low humidity. In your opinion, were they dehydrated enough to cause irreversible organ damage?

This might explain some of the more severe cases, but I don't think it explains EVERY case.

 

[chairman]

[Disclaimer- my medical degree was issued by Google. ]

In humans (the best financed research I can find), bone growth issues are almost always related to vitamin/mineral deficiencies of some variety. Sometimes it is actually a deficiency in the diet, others it is an organ or process that isn't working properly so the vitamins/minerals present in the diet don't get used by the body, and then there're some genetic issues, etc. So, to me, the research Danny has summarized makes a lot of sense. Water is a necessary component of blood, and not having enough water in the blood makes it so that things can't properly dissolve in the blood for dissemination throughout the body. And if the supplies aren't getting to the organs, how are they supposed to work? I wouldn't expect organ damage to be immediate, but over time it'd have to happen. Also, I wouldn't expect a researcher to come out and cry organ damage if blood tests, etc didn't indicate that it was happening.

But my biggest question is, do any other vertebrates "easily" get bone growth issues similar to pyramided shells? What makes tortoise shells so special? The only thing I can think is that most vertebrates keep their bones encased in a meat suit, and tortoises don't. So maybe the lack of a flesh encasement is a good clue to chase? There's a hypothesis for ya- tortoises pyramid because their shells don't have flesh growing over them.