Hi All,
A while back I posted about weird behavior my tortoise was experiencing with his diet and pooping habits. He was barely eating for months and would rarely poop. I brought him to the vet because this behavior was really really starting to worry me that he was experiencing some sort of renal failure. It turns out, he had a large collection of dirt packed into his leg cavity that basically calcified into like a rock.
Honestly, I guess I never really thought to pull his legs back and check to see inside his leg cavity, but the vet said this was preventing him from pooping or wanting to eat because it was putting a stress on his organs. As soon as the vet cleaned it out, he instantly pooped out a log and became very hyper, like he used to be.
The vet is recommending that I get rid of substrate all together to prevent this from happening again, and using slate with different areas of sphagnum moss for burrowing. I was hoping to get some opinions on this. This whole thing has been really stressful and I’m afraid that if I leave the substrate, this could happen again.
He doesn’t have any permanent damage to his organs, but they were shifting to the other side of his body. The vet can’t give me any guarantee, but we hope that they will shift back into place over time.
A while back I posted about weird behavior my tortoise was experiencing with his diet and pooping habits. He was barely eating for months and would rarely poop. I brought him to the vet because this behavior was really really starting to worry me that he was experiencing some sort of renal failure. It turns out, he had a large collection of dirt packed into his leg cavity that basically calcified into like a rock.
Honestly, I guess I never really thought to pull his legs back and check to see inside his leg cavity, but the vet said this was preventing him from pooping or wanting to eat because it was putting a stress on his organs. As soon as the vet cleaned it out, he instantly pooped out a log and became very hyper, like he used to be.
The vet is recommending that I get rid of substrate all together to prevent this from happening again, and using slate with different areas of sphagnum moss for burrowing. I was hoping to get some opinions on this. This whole thing has been really stressful and I’m afraid that if I leave the substrate, this could happen again.
He doesn’t have any permanent damage to his organs, but they were shifting to the other side of his body. The vet can’t give me any guarantee, but we hope that they will shift back into place over time.