Achi Jo
New Member
Joined the forum to make sense of why our baby CH tort would ingest coco coir ..
Reaching out to you @immayo, to help make sense of what just happened tonight oct 13 2018 at 630pm we found our joyful baby cherryhead dead.. mouth to throat stuffed in coco coir. Frantic and shocked we called our vet (and cousin) to come and surely he confirmed Pablo's death due to impaction of coco coir. Using a fine long tweezer he pulled out as much as he can out of Pablo's small mouth, and it was a shocking amount of moist compacted coco coir. Its eyes were dusted with coir too. I now understand that :
1. Food dish should remain in a corner far from cococoir/sphagnum moss
2. The risk of eating something it should not have is applied to all babies
3. Coco coir bedding may be 99% suitable for captive environment but that 1% possibility of a freak accident should drive u to check on your baby tort every hour on the hour. (Should i have installed a cctv cam?)
What is baffling to me is why Pablo would eat coco coir and continue to do so in a large amount.. i mean even if he was chasing a leaf that dropped into the coir (which there were evidence of) wouldnt animal instinct tell u to stop? Before this possibility iv never seen Pablo eat outside his feeding dish.
We burried Pablo inside a basket, dugged into our palm plant. We live in tropical Philippines, Pablo's terrarium is a 4 ft x 3 ft xterra placed indoor. Pablo sunbathes and waterbathes every 730-8am, diet chopped fresh chorcorus and boiled carrots/squash, banana treat, repti vitamin powder twice weekly.
As your post is the only one i found up/down google search, i hope to hear from you and your thoughts. My sisters and i are grieving. Didnt expect death soon or at all, and terribly painful from a pet that friends joke "doesnt do much". We love Pablo so much.
Reaching out to you @immayo, to help make sense of what just happened tonight oct 13 2018 at 630pm we found our joyful baby cherryhead dead.. mouth to throat stuffed in coco coir. Frantic and shocked we called our vet (and cousin) to come and surely he confirmed Pablo's death due to impaction of coco coir. Using a fine long tweezer he pulled out as much as he can out of Pablo's small mouth, and it was a shocking amount of moist compacted coco coir. Its eyes were dusted with coir too. I now understand that :
1. Food dish should remain in a corner far from cococoir/sphagnum moss
2. The risk of eating something it should not have is applied to all babies
3. Coco coir bedding may be 99% suitable for captive environment but that 1% possibility of a freak accident should drive u to check on your baby tort every hour on the hour. (Should i have installed a cctv cam?)
What is baffling to me is why Pablo would eat coco coir and continue to do so in a large amount.. i mean even if he was chasing a leaf that dropped into the coir (which there were evidence of) wouldnt animal instinct tell u to stop? Before this possibility iv never seen Pablo eat outside his feeding dish.
We burried Pablo inside a basket, dugged into our palm plant. We live in tropical Philippines, Pablo's terrarium is a 4 ft x 3 ft xterra placed indoor. Pablo sunbathes and waterbathes every 730-8am, diet chopped fresh chorcorus and boiled carrots/squash, banana treat, repti vitamin powder twice weekly.
As your post is the only one i found up/down google search, i hope to hear from you and your thoughts. My sisters and i are grieving. Didnt expect death soon or at all, and terribly painful from a pet that friends joke "doesnt do much". We love Pablo so much.