Russian quarantine

[TortoiseBoy1999]

Ok so I know people say to have a quarantine time when I get a male Russian tortoise to breed with my female Russian just to see if it's sick. What if I took it to the Vet and the Vet says he's healthy? Then would it be ok to introduce him to my female?

 

[dmmj]

Do a complete blood work and fecal and it should be ok, 400 or 500 in tests, or a 6 month waiting period, I know which I would choose.

 

[wellington]

I would wait the six months. Just a check up and fecal won't tell you everything you need to know. I know some have mentioned 3 month quarantine, not sure though if that's long enough.

 

[TortoiseBoy1999]

Ok 6 months.

 

[Tom]

No. Your vet isn't psychic and there are some things that are difficult or impossible to diagnose in a living animal.

When a fecal comes up clean it can mean many things.
1. The animal didn't shed any of the parasite ova that the vet was looking for during that bowel movement.
2. Your vet missed something.
3. Your vet had the tech do it and the tech doesn't know the difference between and ova and air bubble. Or the inexperienced tech was looking for round things and ignored all the other possibilities. Look at a fecal float sometime. There is all sorts of stuff and it takes an experienced trained eye to see some of those things. It's not as simple as it seems.
4. Some pathogens don't show up in blood or fecal samples. You'd have to do tissue samples, gastric lavage, etc...

Bottom line is that pathogen diagnosis is not easy or foolproof in any way. You need to observe the new tortoise and learn its patterns and habits. Get to know it for a while. Nothing wrong with taking a stool sample to the vet, but it's still a good idea to give it some time to settle in. Especially with Russians because the vast majority of them are wild caught imports. If you found an adult that was a captive raised baby from someone's back yard who had no other tortoises since the time they got him, you would have less of a risk, but still a risk.

 

[TortoiseBoy1999]

Ok. :/

 

[yagyujubei]

I have always been curious of the arbitrary 6 month quarantine. What pathogens have a 6 month incubation period? Just curious how the 6 month figure got started. Anyone?

 

[TylerStewart]

Regardless of passing a 6 month wait, you still want to get a fecal check done, preferably before the tortoise "contaminates" the soil you have it housed on. A WC tortoise (and in Russians, they almost always are, and if they are, always have parasites) can live and act just fine for 6 months while having a parasite (or multiple) so just breaking that time barrier might mean it's more or less healthy, but can still be hiding a bug or disease during that time. Like Tom said, fecal checks aren't real simple; there's lots to see. Our microscope takes photos so we can e-mail around a photo of something that we can't identify for a better ID on it. There's lots of plant material, pollen, etc that can look very much like a parasite egg. We are to the point that we treat them first, and go through fecal checks later. I don't think I ever remember seeing a fresh imported Russian that wasn't carrying something. Even if they were clean in the wild, by the time they are imported and piled up in cages in Florida that are often dirtier than the tortoises, it quickly spreads through the group. It's much easier on a bigger scale to treat them all and then fine-tune anything else you see later on.