I thought I'd share with you our success story, against all odds, of our very poorly Hermann tortoise.
10 weeks ago we noticed that one of our tortoises (we have two) was off her food. After a few days we grew increasingly concerned so booked an appointment with a reptile vet specialist.
We were not prepared to hear what we heard.... Our tortoise not only had an abscess in its jaw, it had metabolic bone disease, calcium deficiency and herpes.
We felt pretty shocked at this news and couldn't quite believe how we had not picked up on any of these things. Our tortoise was extremely under weight and we were told to prepare ourselves for the worse.
An option the vet spoke to us about was inserting an NG tube. This was a feeding tube which was inserted into the stomach and taped to the top of the shell. There were concerns that our tortoise may not even survive the anaesthetic required for the insertion of the tube. Without hesitation and consideration to the cost, we made a decision to go ahead with the operation.
Fortunately our tortoise survived the operation, despite having to spend the evening at the vets.
I have to say I don't think we were quite prepared for the aftercare required following the insertion of the tube. We were initially required to syringe medication, food, water and supplements through the tube four times a day. This meant waking up even earlier then the usual 6am! It meant juggling our hectic work days to ensure that our poorly tortoise got the care it needed. We found our lives to be taken over with measuring up medication and patiently providing the much needed care that our tortoise required. Due to the diagnosis of herpes, we unfortunately had to separate our two tortoises :-( this meant setting up another vivarium.... Which meant more room and more costs!
Over the next four weeks we were almost daily clients at our vets, however we saw the infection from the abscess heal nicely and saw a slow but steady increase in our tortoises' weight. Over the weeks we were advised to reduce feeding via the tube, in order to encourage the tortoise to eat again. Initially things looked good, we saw our tortoise begin to eat small, but some amounts of food. We were made up
Unfortunately in the weeks to follow we saw a further deterioration in her condition. For some reason that we will never know, she displayed no interest in eating food.
After several more appointments with our vet, we agreed to return to the original feeding regime of four syringes per day. Once again, this demanded a lot of our time and patience. Our aim was to build her up to gain further weight and subsequently strength. After the fifth day of going back to this routine we were shocked to see that somehow, she managed to pull the feeding tube out!!
We proceeded back to the vets, understandably concerned that all of the hard work was now ruined. We were faced with being back to square one!
We made a decision to monitor our tortoise for the next three days before deciding whether we need to re-insert the tube, or consider to put our tortoise to sleep.
This was an anxious few days. Lots of questions were flying around in our heads.
To our amaze, on the third day of the tube being out, our tortoise began to eat food naturally. We ensured we tried lots of different types of food such as dandelion leafs, broccoli etc.
I am now pleased to say it has now been 10 days without the tube and we have had a weeks worth of natural eating from our tortoise. As you can imagine, we are over the moon with this. Our tortoise is doing so well and looking so much better. Part of me believes that the tortoise knew when she was ready to get rid of the tube.
So despite the cost, the patience and the time we committed, it was all worth it in the end! After these ten weeks we have learnt so much about our tortoise and the care or Hermann tortoises. We have dedicated a lot of love to this little one and most of all, we have now named her-Shelly!
Shelly has taught us so much about her and ourselves. She is continuing to strive and we pray that this is really the road to her recovery.
10 weeks ago we noticed that one of our tortoises (we have two) was off her food. After a few days we grew increasingly concerned so booked an appointment with a reptile vet specialist.
We were not prepared to hear what we heard.... Our tortoise not only had an abscess in its jaw, it had metabolic bone disease, calcium deficiency and herpes.
We felt pretty shocked at this news and couldn't quite believe how we had not picked up on any of these things. Our tortoise was extremely under weight and we were told to prepare ourselves for the worse.
An option the vet spoke to us about was inserting an NG tube. This was a feeding tube which was inserted into the stomach and taped to the top of the shell. There were concerns that our tortoise may not even survive the anaesthetic required for the insertion of the tube. Without hesitation and consideration to the cost, we made a decision to go ahead with the operation.
Fortunately our tortoise survived the operation, despite having to spend the evening at the vets.
I have to say I don't think we were quite prepared for the aftercare required following the insertion of the tube. We were initially required to syringe medication, food, water and supplements through the tube four times a day. This meant waking up even earlier then the usual 6am! It meant juggling our hectic work days to ensure that our poorly tortoise got the care it needed. We found our lives to be taken over with measuring up medication and patiently providing the much needed care that our tortoise required. Due to the diagnosis of herpes, we unfortunately had to separate our two tortoises :-( this meant setting up another vivarium.... Which meant more room and more costs!
Over the next four weeks we were almost daily clients at our vets, however we saw the infection from the abscess heal nicely and saw a slow but steady increase in our tortoises' weight. Over the weeks we were advised to reduce feeding via the tube, in order to encourage the tortoise to eat again. Initially things looked good, we saw our tortoise begin to eat small, but some amounts of food. We were made up
Unfortunately in the weeks to follow we saw a further deterioration in her condition. For some reason that we will never know, she displayed no interest in eating food.
After several more appointments with our vet, we agreed to return to the original feeding regime of four syringes per day. Once again, this demanded a lot of our time and patience. Our aim was to build her up to gain further weight and subsequently strength. After the fifth day of going back to this routine we were shocked to see that somehow, she managed to pull the feeding tube out!!
We proceeded back to the vets, understandably concerned that all of the hard work was now ruined. We were faced with being back to square one!
We made a decision to monitor our tortoise for the next three days before deciding whether we need to re-insert the tube, or consider to put our tortoise to sleep.
This was an anxious few days. Lots of questions were flying around in our heads.
To our amaze, on the third day of the tube being out, our tortoise began to eat food naturally. We ensured we tried lots of different types of food such as dandelion leafs, broccoli etc.
I am now pleased to say it has now been 10 days without the tube and we have had a weeks worth of natural eating from our tortoise. As you can imagine, we are over the moon with this. Our tortoise is doing so well and looking so much better. Part of me believes that the tortoise knew when she was ready to get rid of the tube.
So despite the cost, the patience and the time we committed, it was all worth it in the end! After these ten weeks we have learnt so much about our tortoise and the care or Hermann tortoises. We have dedicated a lot of love to this little one and most of all, we have now named her-Shelly!
Shelly has taught us so much about her and ourselves. She is continuing to strive and we pray that this is really the road to her recovery.
