Tortoise refuses to eat or drink for the past two weeks

ReginaldSpikey

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Apr 16, 2020
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Parts Unknown
My Indian Star is being very difficult.She refuses to eat or drink absolutely anything, she might just take a bite or two of a cucumber but that's it.

The only thing she actively tries eating is Tomatoes, which I only ever feed to her when I want her to gulp down any medication which is incredibly rare.I don't otherwise feed her tomatoes since they are toxic to a tortoise.

Any suggestions on how to alleviate this issue.A massive heatwave has been taking place at my location, could this have anything to do with this?
 

KarenSoCal

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Low desert 50 mi SE of Palm Springs CA
If she is living outside in the heat, and gets really hot, they will do basically the same as brumation, but for hot weather it's called aestivation. Stars don't generally brumate, but they might aestivate to avoid the heat. Does she have an outdoor enclosure with a place she sleeps? A night box or a burrow of sorts?

How old is she? Baby, juvenile, sub adult, or adult?

Is the rest of her behavior normal? Active, walking around, drinking? soaking?

I know you'll think I'm nuts here, but is there any possibility that she is cold? I ask this because one of the most frequent reasons torts stop eating is because they are too cold. They have to be able to get their core temp high enough to digest food.

This is our care sheet for stars. Read it over and see if anything seems like a cause. Come back with questions. In the meantime someone else will come by maybe with an idea.

 

Tom

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My Indian Star is being very difficult.She refuses to eat or drink absolutely anything, she might just take a bite or two of a cucumber but that's it.

The only thing she actively tries eating is Tomatoes, which I only ever feed to her when I want her to gulp down any medication which is incredibly rare.I don't otherwise feed her tomatoes since they are toxic to a tortoise.

Any suggestions on how to alleviate this issue.A massive heatwave has been taking place at my location, could this have anything to do with this?
Parts unknown? That doesn't help us. Where are you? How is the tortoise being housed? What size tortoise?

When they don't eat its usually temperature related.

Tomatoes are not toxic. Tomato leaves are toxic. Tomatoes are not a good tortoise food.
 
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