tortoisemamaof3
New Member
I have a 2 year old russian tortoise i bought less than a month ago. We bought her from her previous owners, who didn't take care of her properly. The first night my husband brought her home, I noticed her back legs were dragging. She could move them if you picked her up, but if she was on the ground, she only got around by moving her two front arms, and dragging the back legs. We made an appointment with the vet and he confirmed that she had metabolic bone disease. The vet said her skin is very healthy and does not have any parasites, but her shell was a tiny bit soft underneath. This is due to her not having proper lighting, proper enclosure, proper diet, and proper vitamin absorption from her previous owners. When we first brought her home she was eating(not much but a little) also she wasn't very active, since we brought her to the vet, she completely stopped eating. We have been weighing her everyday, and she lost 30 Grams in like 2 days. The vet told us to force feed her with baby food and a syringe and we have been doing so the past 2 days. We gave her a chance to see if she would eat today, and she dropped another 15 Grams today. We ended up having to force feed her again because she hasn't moved at all today and just been staying in one spot. You can tell her energy levels are really low and she's completely not eating or drinking. We are gonna wait and see how she is tomorrow, after force feeding her tonight we put her warm water for a soak(i saw her take her first drink in a while) Any ideas of what else we could do to help her start eating again?