Questions about the tortoise

[qiangzhu]

I feel my tortoise has a problem. It cannot excrete the stool very well. Sometimes, he just excrete half of the stool bar outside the body but he will think he has finished. In fact, there are still part of the stool in his body.Then he will go to any place else to walk and eat but leave the stool bar attached to his tail. I need to help him drag the whole stool out. Is there any problem of the tortoise. Is there any problem with his anus? How can I cure it?

BTW: the stool is not hard. It is pretty soft

 

[Tom]

What species, size and age? How are you housing it? What temperatures?

Do you soak the tortoise? How often?

 

[qiangzhu]

What species, size and age? How are you housing it? What temperatures?

Do you soak the tortoise? How often?

Soak every day

Radiated about 3 inches and 1 year old

Temperature is around 90

 

[Grandpa Turtle 144]

Hi

 

[ascott]

I feel my tortoise has a problem. It cannot excrete the stool very well. Sometimes, he just excrete half of the stool bar outside the body but he will think he has finished. In fact, there are still part of the stool in his body.Then he will go to any place else to walk and eat but leave the stool bar attached to his tail. I need to help him drag the whole stool out. Is there any problem of the tortoise. Is there any problem with his anus? How can I cure it?

BTW: the stool is not hard. It is pretty soft

What is the "normal" diet that you offer? What is temp during the day and the night that you keep the tortoise in . What type of exercise does the tort have?

 

[qiangzhu]

What is the "normal" diet that you offer? What is temp during the day and the night that you keep the tortoise in . What type of exercise does the tort have?

Temp is around 90f

Normal diet is wheat grass, dandeleon greens, Mazuri and zoo med

I will add calcium powder in the first day, multi vitamin in the second day, nutribac diet supplement in the third day and the calcium in the forth day like this

I don’t know what exercise the tortoise does. It just lie down in the tote and sleep. Sometimes it will walk in the tote. That’s it

 

[ascott]

Temp is around 90f

Normal diet is wheat grass, dandeleon greens, Mazuri and zoo med

I will add calcium powder in the first day, multi vitamin in the second day, nutribac diet supplement in the third day and the calcium in the forth day like this

I don’t know what exercise the tortoise does. It just lie down in the tote and sleep. Sometimes it will walk in the tote. That’s it

Do you soak the tortoise? How many times per week? How long are the soaks? Is the water warm water? If you are feeding Mazuri, how many days per week? Are you soaking the Mazuri prior to offering? If you are offering Mazuri 2 to 3 times per week or more then why are you offering additional calcium powder? and what is making you offer a multi vitamin?

 

[qiangzhu]

Do you soak the tortoise? How many times per week? How long are the soaks? Is the water warm water? If you are feeding Mazuri, how many days per week? Are you soaking the Mazuri prior to offering? If you are offering Mazuri 2 to 3 times per week or more then why are you offering additional calcium powder? and what is making you offer a multi vitamin?

Soak everyday for 36mins. Water is warm around 90-100 f. Mazuri is so hard so I soak it to make it extremely soft. Vitamin is a reptile friendly powder I bought from Amazon

I feel the tortoise may have some disease. Some problems with its anus muscle. So he may not have enough power ton excrete the stool. Anybody in this forum understands the tortoise or animist medical knowledge?

From all the reply, I found everybody asks some basic breeding procedure questions and no conclusion after the questions. I already answered those fundamental questions several time....

 

[Tom]

I think you need much more variety in the diet. This might be the source of the constipation.

I also think you are over supplementing. Once or twice a week for calcium and once a week for vitamins is plenty. With a good diet, you really don't need either.

Another thing that is important for digestion and keeping the GI tract moving is locomotion. Tortoises need a large enclosure and lots of exercise. Sedentary tortoises have less gut motility. What size is your enclosure? If your tortoise is not active, you may need to add or adjust the lighting and/or temperatures. Show us a picture and tell us what you are using for heating and lighting, and we may see the problem or have suggestions for improvement for you.

If your tortoise is not passing stools well, I would soak for a longer time period. This will also help to soften up the material. Soak for an hour. It won't hurt anything and it may help.

 

[Dizisdalife]

Sorry for all the questions. You understand that without background info it is difficult to offer sound advice. I can tell you from my experience, tortoises will drag their feces behind them, sometimes. I have a large sulcata that will do this very same thing. Eventually it all comes out. The worry is that there may be a blockage in the urinary or digestive tract due to improper diet, lack of water, low temperatures, or other husbandry practices. In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with your tortoise's anal muscles.

 

[Yvonne G]

It's quite ok to gently maneuver the rest of the poop out.

 

[qiangzhu]

I think you need much more variety in the diet. This might be the source of the constipation.

I also think you are over supplementing. Once or twice a week for calcium and once a week for vitamins is plenty. With a good diet, you really don't need either.

Another thing that is important for digestion and keeping the GI tract moving is locomotion. Tortoises need a large enclosure and lots of exercise. Sedentary tortoises have less gut motility. What size is your enclosure? If your tortoise is not active, you may need to add or adjust the lighting and/or temperatures. Show us a picture and tell us what you are using for heating and lighting, and we may see the problem or have suggestions for improvement for you.

If your tortoise is not passing stools well, I would soak for a longer time period. This will also help to soften up the material. Soak for an hour. It won't hurt anything and it may help.

The enclosure size is not large. I have a large tote but I feel it is very hard to control the temperature. The large one is a plastic tote from walmart. However, the spots under the ceramic light will be very hot. Can be more than 100 f. While some corner will be very cold, around 70 f. Then the tortoise likes to stay in those dark and cold corners. I feel that may hurt its health. I tried use some foil paper to do some seaI of the tote. But it doesn't quite help since I cannot seal them very well. I have ceramic lights and uv lights which has a fixture which needs to be inserted into the tote from outside. can make the whole tote to be almost 85- 95 degrees if I use this relative small tote.

 

[qiangzhu]

I have two more questions

My tortoise looks like going to sleep when it is soaked. Not sure if this is too comfortable to it. The only worried part is that its head may fall into the water and get drown which make cause some health problem to its lung or even dead. I need to continue to wake it up when it is soaked. Any good way to keep them awake?

The other thing is that the tortoise likes to eat its stool. When the stool is out, it will start to eat it. I cannot be fast enough to pick its stool up every time. Not sure it will cause any health problem or not.

 

[qiangzhu]

I think you need much more variety in the diet. This might be the source of the constipation.

I also think you are over supplementing. Once or twice a week for calcium and once a week for vitamins is plenty. With a good diet, you really don't need either.

Another thing that is important for digestion and keeping the GI tract moving is locomotion. Tortoises need a large enclosure and lots of exercise. Sedentary tortoises have less gut motility. What size is your enclosure? If your tortoise is not active, you may need to add or adjust the lighting and/or temperatures. Show us a picture and tell us what you are using for heating and lighting, and we may see the problem or have suggestions for improvement for you.

If your tortoise is not passing stools well, I would soak for a longer time period. This will also help to soften up the material. Soak for an hour. It won't hurt anything and it may help.

also besides Dandeleon greens, what else in the grocery stores I can give to tortoise? I don't have a yard and I don't want to pick up the weeds in the roadside. It may have some harmful chemical supplements

 

[qiangzhu]

Sorry for all the questions. You understand that without background info it is difficult to offer sound advice. I can tell you from my experience, tortoises will drag their feces behind them, sometimes. I have a large sulcata that will do this very same thing. Eventually it all comes out. The worry is that there may be a blockage in the urinary or digestive tract due to improper diet, lack of water, low temperatures, or other husbandry practices. In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with your tortoise's anal muscles.

thanks a lot!

 

[ascott]

also besides Dandeleon greens, what else in the grocery stores I can give to tortoise? I don't have a yard and I don't want to pick up the weeds in the roadside. It may have some harmful chemical supplements

Collard greens, mustard greens, carrots, escarole, romaine, green and red leaf lettuce, sweet potato (cooked and cooled) and some fruits. And you can offer some succulents.

 

[TammyJ]

I think you need much more variety in the diet. This might be the source of the constipation.

I also think you are over supplementing. Once or twice a week for calcium and once a week for vitamins is plenty. With a good diet, you really don't need either.

Another thing that is important for digestion and keeping the GI tract moving is locomotion. Tortoises need a large enclosure and lots of exercise. Sedentary tortoises have less gut motility. What size is your enclosure? If your tortoise is not active, you may need to add or adjust the lighting and/or temperatures. Show us a picture and tell us what you are using for heating and lighting, and we may see the problem or have suggestions for improvement for you.

If your tortoise is not passing stools well, I would soak for a longer time period. This will also help to soften up the material. Soak for an hour. It won't hurt anything and it may help.

I totally agree with all you have said here, Tom. More space and exercise is needed, cut down on the supplements, (which I think maybe its body is trying to get rid of), more variety in the diet, (like what Ascot said) and pictures and details of temperatures and humidity levels. Also the temperature of the soaking water - if he seems to be falling asleep in it, it may be too cold. It should be just barely warm to the touch and reach him just about where his top shell joins the bottom one.

 

[qiangzhu]

I totally agree with all you have said here, Tom. More space and exercise is needed, cut down on the supplements, (which I think maybe its body is trying to get rid of), more variety in the diet, (like what Ascot said) and pictures and details of temperatures and humidity levels. Also the temperature of the soaking water - if he seems to be falling asleep in it, it may be too cold. It should be just barely warm to the touch and reach him just about where his top shell joins the bottom one.

It’s not cold. The temperature is from 30 to 40 C which I believe it is 90-100f. I will first make the water around 40 c and the temperature will continue to drop. When it reaches 30 c, I will add hot water to make it back to 40.

I don’t have a good way to keep the water temperature as a constant.

Sometimes I will make it a little higher even to 45c. But I also cannot make the temperature higher than 45c. I feel it might be too hot.

 

[qiangzhu]

Collard greens, mustard greens, carrots, escarole, romaine, green and red leaf lettuce, sweet potato (cooked and cooled) and some fruits. And you can offer some succulents.

Ok. I can buy these things. But one problem is that I only have one tortoise and it eats not much everyday. The grocery store usually doesn’t let me do a mix of greens. If I buy one veg, I need to buy a certain amount. That amount can let my tortoise eat for at least two weeks. If I buy multiple vegs and the tortoise cannot eat that much, the result may be that most of the veg will go bad after 2-3 weeks and get wasted. So I only can do one veg every two weeks. Is that ok for the multiple diet?

Personally I don’t quite eat those vegs so I also cannot eat the veg if the tortoise cannot finish them all.

 

[qiangzhu]

I totally agree with all you have said here, Tom. More space and exercise is needed, cut down on the supplements, (which I think maybe its body is trying to get rid of), more variety in the diet, (like what Ascot said) and pictures and details of temperatures and humidity levels. Also the temperature of the soaking water - if he seems to be falling asleep in it, it may be too cold. It should be just barely warm to the touch and reach him just about where his top shell joins the bottom one.

Talking about the humidity. I’d like to talk about the heating way first. I use the ceramic light to heat but I feel it is a humidity killer. The temperature of the place under or around the ceramic light is high but the humidity is low. In the corners which the ceramic light cannot Impact, humidity is higher but temperature is lower. I am using a fog humidifier but it doesn’t quite change the situation

I also find Amazon sell the heating pad but it cannot be used under a plastic tote. What heating device do you guys use?