ayana's new home

[moswen]

well, i've had yana for almost a year and she isn't growing, but my worst fears are. i really don't think she's being bullied, i acutally used to think she was the bullier bc i've seen her bite moswen's spur so hard that he pulled into his shell when he was trying to take her food from her.

regardless, yana's started sleeping all day and walks straight from her bath to her bed every day now. and she stays there till morning when i pick her up and put her in her bath again. so, i've decided to give her every tortoise's dream: a home with no roommates. this is what it looks like:

it's not near as big as her old home, but she doesn't have to share it with anyone.

yesterday she just went under those leaves and slept. this morning i gave ger some carrot baby food, but she kept biting the air infront of the carrots and couldn't get to them. it was SO sad! so i did this:

and she ate:

and ate:

and...... ate!!! all by herself!!!!! i haven't seen her use this much energy in a month or more!

so maybe, in the back of my head, i may begin to harvest the smallest amount of hope....

 

[Yvonne G]

I guess I haven't been following this story. Do you think she might be blind?

 

[Maggie Cummings]

That's exactly what I was going to ask. The biting the air in front of or over the food is usually a sign of blindness...What do you think?

 

[moswen]

oh no, how very sad!!!! i just thought she didn't have the energy to stick her head out any further. she gets to the same sleeping spot, through the tunnel and a sharp right turn and into the same corner she's always slept in every day, do you think she could do that if she's blind?

how could i tell if she is blind, will her eyes look a certain way or something?

 

[Maggie Cummings]

The next time she's awake and active see if you can slowly bring your finger up to touch her eyeball. That's a bad thing. Move your finger back and forth in front of her face and see if she moves away from it. But don't wake her up to do it, watch how she eats and see if she still has trouble finding her food next feeding and let us know how she's doing...maybe she hasn't been being bullied, maybe she can't see too good...

She could be following her smells to get into her hide...

and BTW you did exactly the right thing to separate your animal when you thought there might be a problem...good job!

 

[moswen]

okay i was going to start soaking her twice a day anyways, i'll soak her in a few and let you know how the finger thing goes.

sorry yvonne, this is a new story, i've just been keeping my observations to myself for a while. a few days ago on an update post i posted about how i don't think yana's digestive tract is developing due to a lack of any parasites whatsoever, but that's the first i've mentioned it. a month or so ago i posted growth rates and pyramiding developments in all three of them and i mentioned that yana hasn't grown, and a few people said that they all just grow differently, so i felt better about it. but now she's a year old, and only 2 inches. so i believe there really is something wrong with her...

 

[moswen]

well, it's amazing what a transformation she's made in 24 hours! and i really hope that this is not just a "me thinking she's doing better because i want her to do better" type of thing... but she's tearing into a piece of kale right now, i haven't seen her even eating before this morning in over a week. 2 minutes into her second soak she was up and about trying to find a way out of her container.

i tried the blind test, sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't... i touched her eye a couple of times, but sometimes she would back away from my finger. i'm not sure if she's partially blind or if she just didn't care if i was touching her, or if maybe she caught my scent a couple of times and ducked back... i just don't know. sometimes i would get really close and she would start rubbing her eye with her forearm like she thought something was in it. i just ended up giving up bc i didn't want to stress her out.

 

[Balboa]

Good call on the blindness Yvonne and Maggie, that's experience for you, I don't know that I would have ever thought to ask that one.

Looks like a very nice enclosure for her, good job Rebekah.

I would bet money on a blind, or partially blind tortoise being able to learn their way around, but yes competing with others would certainly be tricky!

 

[Yvonne G]

This is a little off topic, but you'd be surprised how well a blind animal gets around. I know that blind people have to physically count steps, etc. But I've had experience with two blind animals, a horse and now a pig. The horse lived in a paddock and I had to put hot wire all over the place because being blind she was bored and chewed everything. She got around her paddock and up into the barn just fine and I never saw her bump into anything or get zapped by the wire. She knew exactly where everything was.

And now the pig. He's not really blind per se, but he has a fat fold over both eyes so that he can't see. He gets around his paddock just fine too. He never bumps into the fence. And he's brave enough to nudge the gate open when its not latched properly and go out and explore.

There's no doubt in my mind that a blind tortoise could get around his habitat just fine.

 

[moswen]

well, do you think it's just a recent thing? she used to eat off the tops of every single new shoot that i grow in their enclosure. and i'm positive she hasn't always been blind. and how could that account for her not growing? or what about her recent inactivity, do you think it could be due to her recent blindness? do you think it could just be her body, shutting down one organ at a time bc she just can't get the nutrients out of her food?

 

[Balboa]

Tough to guess, but something tells me if she was a "failure to thrive" case, she'd be dead already.

It "sounds" to my inexperienced mind, like this is a case of an otherwise very healthy tort born blind, or nearly so. As she has difficulty competing she will tend to lose out against her enclosure mates, and fall further and further behind over time. Had she been left there she may have very well died to malnutrition.

As you point out, it could be the other way around, and the blindness is a recent result of her body shutting down. They way you describe her "perking up" though makes me think otherwise.

All that is just my 2 cents as a concerned fellow keeper, and could all be totally off-base. A true expert may have some very different observations to make.

 

[RianSeeking]

I'm so glad you separated her out, especially as it seems to be making a difference.

I learn something new every day here.

 

[SusanTristin]

Tortoise not needs so much caring. It will live in any atmosphere and very easily set it, it is very easy to take care equal to fishes. Recently I was purchase child tortoise, it looks very quite and very nice.

 

[Tom]

Did she ever have one of those coiled reptile UV bulbs? Maybe before you ever got her? Remind me, how old was she when you got her? In other words, how long was she with the breeder? I think we talked about this before, but did the breeder keep her on dry pellets with no water bowl of humidity?

 

[Kristina]

Not to get too off topic either, but I have some experience with blindness.

Meet Oreo and Patches. The video quality is not good, and there is no sound, but I am sure you can get the point.

http://www.myspace.com/video/kyryah/oreo-and-patches/1937577

These were my blind horses. BOTH. Blind. Galloping. Loving life. Look how they knew where the fence was!

My point is that blindness is not a sentence of a poor life, a sad life, or the end of life. That video is of my babies running towards my whistle from the middle of a 40 acre field. Do they look sad, pitiful, or full of suffering? I certainly don't think so

Personally, I don't think blindness is all that likely to be the problem for Yana. But if it is - she will be JUST fine.

I think mental bullying is more likely the culprit.

 

[moswen]

Did she ever have one of those coiled reptile UV bulbs? Maybe before you ever got her? Remind me, how old was she when you got her? In other words, how long was she with the breeder? I think we talked about this before, but did the breeder keep her on dry pellets with no water bowl of humidity?

i'm sure he did tom... mos came from the same guy, look at his shell. yana and fina were both 2-3 months old when i got them, mos ~7 mos. that is what he told me, i don't know if he kept birth records or not, i didn't ask!

when i got them i had them on a coil bulb, i'd kept tula that way for 2 years, didn't know anything different and she never had eye problems with it. but i was told to get rid of it when i joined here, so i did, and i changed tula's bulb too. so they were on a bulb for probably a month with me, i don't know what he had them on before i got them.

---

Not to get too off topic either, but I have some experience with blindness.

Meet Oreo and Patches. The video quality is not good, and there is no sound, but I am sure you can get the point.

http://www.myspace.com/video/kyryah/oreo-and-patches/1937577

These were my blind horses. BOTH. Blind. Galloping. Loving life. Look how they knew where the fence was!

My point is that blindness is not a sentence of a poor life, a sad life, or the end of life. That video is of my babies running towards my whistle from the middle of a 40 acre field. Do they look sad, pitiful, or full of suffering? I certainly don't think so

Personally, I don't think blindness is all that likely to be the problem for Yana. But if it is - she will be JUST fine.

I think mental bullying is more likely the culprit.

oh how sweet! i know she will have a good life, especially with me as her mommy!! but it still will make me sad for her! but, honestly if she is going blind i do believe it is just her organs shutting down. she's a year old and 2 inches long, and she's a sulcata. i just don't know how this is going to turn out. but for a nice update:

she ate 1/4 of a cactus fruit with me holding it again this morning, she kept biting at the air infront of it but couldn't get to it. i've almost determined that she's got some good, maybe partial, eyesight in her left eye, but her right eye is probably gone. she kept smelling the food, then turning her right eye onto the food and trying to bite it, she could't get it. but when i went to touch her left eye today she backed away, so she could see me with her left eye at the direction i was coming in on her.

 

[Yvonne G]

Its the binocular vision thing. With one eye its hard for them to judge distance because two eyes puts it in the correct perspective. However, she WILL eventually become accustomed to monocular vision and figure it out. Its good of you to take the time with spoon feeding and hand feeding her. That's probably why she didn't get soft and die 6 months ago.