Hello! A quick introduction, my name is Kim, I'm 25 years old and a grad student. Me and my family care for many box turts, and my most precious sulcata, Sky.
So I understand its generally normal that a sully may excrete some of that white stuff with their urine. Sky's just a baby, and I've seen her do this on occasion. Lately I've been growing concerned because her stools have changed consistency and more often than not, seems like she's having diarrhea (this started happening a week ago). I feed her a variety of weeds such as sowthistle, dandelion, henbit, and mallow along with weedy grasses. She also gets plenty of sunshine and time to graze our lawn. her selection is a little more limited now due to it being winter, so romaine lettuce has started being more common in her diet as of about a month ago.
back to my story, I was soaking her in the sink and cleaning around her.. ahem, nether regions with a q-tip, when out of nowhere she SHOOTS urine straight up at least 6 inches right at my face. Lucky, she just got it in my hair and on the sink, lol. Needless to say I was kind of mortified, and even more so to see how much of the urates were in her urine! I was really concerned so I sifted through it (I'm sorry if that sounds totally disgusting), and found two particularly large, hard urate stones (I have a pic of 'em below).
From reading other threads I've come to the conclusion that she may be dehydrated, but I'm very confused with why this could be the case (yes, I did mention that she's had diarrhea, but I was wondering if it was because of the romaine :/). I haven't soaked her daily in the past, but I know now that's definitely going to change and I plan on giving her daily soaks if it'll help her pass these things and feel better. But besides that, should I be greatly concerned right now, and does anyone have any suggestions they can offer me?
So I understand its generally normal that a sully may excrete some of that white stuff with their urine. Sky's just a baby, and I've seen her do this on occasion. Lately I've been growing concerned because her stools have changed consistency and more often than not, seems like she's having diarrhea (this started happening a week ago). I feed her a variety of weeds such as sowthistle, dandelion, henbit, and mallow along with weedy grasses. She also gets plenty of sunshine and time to graze our lawn. her selection is a little more limited now due to it being winter, so romaine lettuce has started being more common in her diet as of about a month ago.
back to my story, I was soaking her in the sink and cleaning around her.. ahem, nether regions with a q-tip, when out of nowhere she SHOOTS urine straight up at least 6 inches right at my face. Lucky, she just got it in my hair and on the sink, lol. Needless to say I was kind of mortified, and even more so to see how much of the urates were in her urine! I was really concerned so I sifted through it (I'm sorry if that sounds totally disgusting), and found two particularly large, hard urate stones (I have a pic of 'em below).
From reading other threads I've come to the conclusion that she may be dehydrated, but I'm very confused with why this could be the case (yes, I did mention that she's had diarrhea, but I was wondering if it was because of the romaine :/). I haven't soaked her daily in the past, but I know now that's definitely going to change and I plan on giving her daily soaks if it'll help her pass these things and feel better. But besides that, should I be greatly concerned right now, and does anyone have any suggestions they can offer me?