Redfoot Tortoise Threw Up

[Alex and the Redfoot]

Hi!
I'm glad that Lightning is fine and the vet visit went well.

1. Calcium supplements - can be any (more or less known) brand. Rep-Cal is told to be the best. I give mine Arcadia EarthPro at the moment. A tiny pinch twice a week is enough for a tortoise on a varied diet with other supplements. Crushed egg shells can be used instead of calcium powder. Some food options also have high calcium contents (silverside fish, black soldier fly larvae, isopods, opuntia cactus pads, egg with shell etc.)

2. Out of two products recommended by your vet I would settle on Mazuri LS, as a source of additional plant fiber. Other options are ZooMed Grassland pellets or Arcadia Optimized52 Tortoise Food. Tortoise Herbal Hay from TortoiseSupply or Tortoise Food Fixer from Kapidolo Farms are other good high-fiber additions to diet (perhaps, better even, as these are pure dried plant matter without additives). I should warn that rare redfoot enjoys high-fiber foods - it takes patience to introduce. Foods containing pure timothy hay are not the best - usually it's too stemmy (even for sulcatas).

3. 4 to 6 inches of substrate is usually enough to keep high humidity once enclosure is properly sealed and heated. If you can mix lower and upper layers of substrate and pack it down again - this will also help.

 

[EppsDynasty]

I liked the vet a lot! She seemed to know her stuff and was asking similar questions to y'all.

She doesn't know anything ...... sorry.
RedFoots DON'T eat grasses and her telling you this is a giant red flag. Now yes our RedFoots occasionally eat grasses BUT it is not a big part of their diet. The LS is crap .... go with the original 5M21 Mazuri ... especially for RedFoots, they need more protein. That Komodo grass Pellet is crap as well .... just a cheap product being offered for money NOT for the benefit of a tort .... look at how stemmy it is ....
You just did what is very common with tort owners and vets that don't know what they are talking about. You let her make 'You' feel good but clearly is not a knowledgeable tort vet and gave terrible advice and guidance. So you feel great and like her but the tort still suffers .... what is more important your feelings or your tortoises life?
As for the sugar levels and fruits .......
The level of sugars they naturally eat is about that of a squash, NOT an apple or strawberry or melons or any of that other stuff we consider fruit. If you do feed very sweet fruits such as blueberries you are giving 3 times, 4 times as much sugar as they naturally would consume. This vet will only cause suffering in tortoises due to her ego and thinking she 'Know's' what she is talking about and clearly she is far from knowledgeable. This is NOT your fault it is very common for vets to do this. Think to yourself ...... If she knew nothing would she tell me that? Would she ever say to me "I'm not sure of that and I don't feel comfortable charging you for something I'm not very educated on?" ...... of course not she's going to tell you things to justify charging you at the determent of your tortoises life .... WELCOME to tortoise veterinary services.

 

[Littleredfootbigredheart]

Hello everyone, I'm sorry for going MIA it's been a crazy 48 hours but I do have some positive updates!

For one, I did end up bringing my tort to a vet. Honestly, I just wanted some peace of mind. I had also booked the appoitment in a panic, and at that point figured it was worth going instead of just paying a cancellation fee. I liked the vet a lot! She seemed to know her stuff and was asking similar questions to y'all. What temps, how far the UVB was from my torts shell, what I had been feeding her, and so on. Here's a summary of some of what was discussed.

• My tort "lightning" who I've been referring to as a man for her entire life is in fact a woman. Her new nickname is now "Lightning McQUEEN". Ever since I got her she's had a very slight indent at the bottom of her shell which made me believe she was a man, but it seems that isn't the case. Regardless, it's been an adjustment.
• They said Lightning was quite strong! The vet also said that although she does have pyramiding (a lot of it happened before I got her, although as a kid I did not take proper care of her, so I probably didn't help) her shell isn't soft or anything and is sturdy, so that's good.
• They took X-rays of her and found nothing out of the oridinary which I thought was good, also no eggs.
• The main steps of improvment the vet recommended to me were to start giving her calcium, specifically w/o D3. I remember having calcium powder when I first got her, but I swapped to power pellets somewhat recently. I thought that was making her pyramiding worse though, as I think it was way too much protein. If anyone has any Calcium powder recomendations please let me know, I'll pick it up ASAP. Also, how oten do you offer it to your Redfoots?
• She also said to soak her a bit more often. I'm not sure how much y'all soak your Redfoots, if you could give me an idea of how often you do that'd be very helpful.
• Last but not least the vet said that Lightning was quite hungry. This didn't surprise me as between her throwing up and coming to the vet I didn't feed her too too much. I gave her about a handful of collard greens and a few blueberries. The Vet said that I should offer her something to graze on basically at all times. Now here's where I'm a bit confused. I would say that I offer my tortoise a pretty sizble salad each day. A mix of maybe some Kale, Collard Greens, and some fruits. She usually eats the fruit right away and then maybe comes back later to munch on some greens. The Vet said I should pick up some hay and recommended these two products. Product 1 Product 2. She basically said I should have something like this or her to graze on at all times between the bigger meals, but I kind of feel like she kind of already does that? She eats what she wants and then kind of comes back to eat again later. I'm afraid of overfeeding her too much and having another situation like this happen again.

Generally speaking she's doing much much better. She's no longer lethargic, is running around a lot, and is soaking in her water bowl when she feels like it. The Vet said to introduce one new food a week if I'm going to introduce new foods. I definetely added too many things to her diet too quickly. She has not thrown up again since I posted the original post in this thread.

To answer a few questions from y'all

I offered Lightning an entire scrambled chicken egg... I'm going to assume that was maybe too much. It was definetely too much for her first!

Her enclosure is roughly 6.5 feet long x 3.5 feet wide. Not totally optimal, but this was created rather quickly to ensure that I could start getting her heat and humidity up. The temperature of her enclosure sits between 80F-84F. The thing I'm trying to work on most is getting her humidity up. I just got a digital hydrometer and at the moment it's sitting at 67%. It's usually between there and 70%. I do realise that 70% is the floor though and that I need to get it up. If you have any suggestions on how to do this I'm all ears as I massively messed up trying to increase it by adding water. I added WAY too much water to the corners of her enclosure, so much so that it started leaking out, and did some water damage to the tiling on ceiling of my basement. With some help today I was able to slip some PVC liner below the enclosure, so that shouldn't happen again, but the substrate is quite damp. Maybe I just need more of it? At the moment I'd say I'm at about 4" of Coco Choir and a layer of orchid bark on top of that. I will add that I found a pretty big gap in the green house lining after the construction today... Where the zipper of the green house is it seemed a bit part of the green house liner ripped, I patched it up with some water-proof tape and hopefully that helps.

Sorry for the long winded post, and thank you all for your advice, I know I put like 30 questions in here. It was a scary 48 hours but we seem to be on the up n up.

Hello! I’ve had this on the back burner to respond to after the busy holidays! Thanks for your update!

I’m really glad the X-rays were clear, that’s great news

Your vet visit could’ve definitely been worse, she doesn’t sound the worst of the worst by any means, but there’s definitely some things that throw up some red flags(but this isn’t unusual with tortoise vet visits unfortunately as you know)

Calcium powder can be just the tiniest pinch a few times a week, you should barely be able to see it on the food, but as @COmtnLady mentions above, with a more balanced diet there’s really no need for supplements at all, especially with cuttlefish readily available

We follow a similar soak routine to the one she mentioned above too, ours gets about an hour every other day

Like the others I’m definitely thrown by the vets suggestion of hay, this is certainly something a red foot wouldn’t eat, the only thing that comes to mind is her thinking was to up fibre intake after hearing she’d had diarrhoea, but the recommendations above in terms of diet are great

It could be the tummy upset was too much egg at once as it was new, little by little with anyway new

In terms of humidity, I’m thinking it’s because there’s gaps/seams it’s escaping somewhere, your temperatures sound good, unfortunately when an enclosure isn’t tightly sealed(I don’t think your base has been if there was a leak), humidity can be a bit of a battle, how’s it been since you sealed that gap you found? Try and thicken the substrate even more if you can, it could be the ratio of substrate compared with the entire chamber is a little off, the bigger/higher the cover, the more substrate needed to compensate