white poop aka urates question

[Nimbledoe]

I have had my RT about 2 weeks now. Second day I had him he had the white urate, about tooth paste texture. But he has never had it since. Is this normal? He poops regular poop every day, according to pictures it looks normal.

He also either self soaks or drinks everyday. I keep a shallow dish little bigger than him and he will drink out of it or just walk all the way through it daily. Sometimes he will just lay there for 5-10 minutes. Its warm under a light.

Oh, he NEVER poops in the water bath. I have like a 2 story enclosure I made for him with a ramp going up to the,kinda, second floor. I covered it with indoor/outdoor carpet. Every day he goes up there and poops. No where else but up there. I have a large enclosure just under 6' long and 3-4 feet wide and put 5 different feeding stations in different places.She now knows where they all are and makes her rounds. There are 1 each end of the ramp. At the far end is where she poops everyday. Is this also normal to have a special place to poop?

Thanks for any info you can give me.
Katie

 

[Nimbledoe]

My Thor doesn't usually go poop in the bath either, and most of the time when he pees theres a bit of white, which are oxalates, they come from his food when he ingests types of food with oxalic acid, which gives it a bitter taste. If its more of a solid than a goo then you want to cut back a little on bitter greens, but it doesn't sound like hes dehydrated, although he soaks often, since he does get soaks he sounds fine.

It can be a problem if he gets way too much oxalic acid, think of it as kind of like kidney stones. If theres too much it can form a stone that he cannot pass which.. obviously is bad news. What do you feed him? I strive to give a variety of different greens, and kind of cycle through what I have so he never gets the same combo every time and that way he gets different greens and not too much of anything. You can do research on it, I believe www.russiantortoise.com (I think thats it) has a good list and gives some amounts of oxalic acid, phosphorus, calcium and fiber amounts in particular foods which should give you a good idea on what to feed him how often.

But like I said, if its more gooey than solid its nothing to worry about

Er... maybe its urates, its almost 5am and Im fried hehehe but the info is still the same.

By the way, he is a gorgeous tort

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Ah here you go this is the site I mentioned:

http://www.russiantortoise.org/russiantortoisediet.htm

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Thankyou for getting back to me. I did research that site and others before I got Oakley. I made the 'safe' list and 'moderate' list. I try really hard to get mostly safe. But I put in small amounts of aloe vera, christmas cactus, pumkin, romaine, kale and a few others which are listed on the moderate list. So whatever I have I mix all in with 'spring mix', at a much smaller portion. We are under 6-10" of snow so I am at the mercy of grocery and health food stores. I worry about her diet as she is such a big eater, I just pray she will be ok until spring when I can get stuff outside. I guess I am a worried new mom.

 

[Nimbledoe]

Believe me I know exactly what you mean haha I worry constantly!

What I do (I have to rely on the same places for now) is kind of rotate which ones I give mine, and over a bit of time I could tell which ones would give him more urates or not so I could balance it out with stuff that doesnt, so maybe you could try that? She looks great and happy

So, if she does not have the white urate....this is a good thing?

 

[Nimbledoe]

Well you should try to minimize it, but if its notsolid it isnt anything to worry about. The fact that she is peeing is a good sign that she's getting the water she needs and urates are just part of the way they do things so they aren't necessarily something you need to worry about. The first time I saw it I did the same thing as you, jumped on here and asked a bunch of questions because its scary and you worry something is wrong lol So Ive done a lot of homework on this particular aspect, and it could be if its too solid (paste isnt terrible but it should be less solid than that if possible) I read it means they're getting too much oxalates, or more than you would really want, so I started using less bitter greens and everything is just fine here!

You could think of it as like with humans kind of, when we have more vitamins/minerals than we use its expelled that way, same with any toxins. They get filtered out by the liver and kidneys and expelled via urine, torts expel via urea which is slightly different, but the principle of expelling unneeded or toxic substances applies, the more solid it gets the more they are expelling. Make sense?

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OH! Also, I have a platform where the urea doesn't dry very quickly, so if its on the substrate it could just LOOK more solid because its already drying out, in cases like that if I see Thor go pee, and Im wondering about it, I grab a piece of straw/hay and just poke it a bit to check the consistency

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Thanks for explaining all this to me. Yes, it does help me understand more and lesson my worry lines.

 

[Nimbledoe]

Its good to ask if you're worried, only good tort parents do that

Ive gone so far in researching as to study tortoise anatomy and how they function, if you're curious its a good way to understand things like this

Thats a good idea.