Dead aldabra from choking!

[ALDABRAMAN]

FYI​

~ I was recently contacted by one of our customers that had several of our tortoises. The one in question was hatched in 2011 and was in overall fantastic health. It appears that the tortoise had choked on a piece of carrot, suffocating it. The owner is obviously devastated.

~ I also had a recent conversation with another one of our customers that shared with me of a person who had just gotten a mature male Gallop and it choked on a carrot right in front of him, also suffocating.

~ My objective is to simply share these circumstances with this TFO community. We have decided to not feed our population carrots any further.

 

[wellington]

That's very sad, how horrible. I always use a veggie peeler to shave pieces of carrot. They are then thin strips. A food processor works good too.

 

[ALDABRAMAN]

That's very sad, how horrible. I always use a veggie peeler to shave pieces of carrot. They are then thin strips. A food processor works good too.

~ Yes, that is a great idea to shred them to avoid any chance of lodging and blocking the airway.

 

[vladimir]

Thank you for sharing this. I had not considered this risk before

 

[wellington]

Greg, you might want to consider cutting the peppers and any other big foods into smaller bite size pieces.
Of course as everyone with a tortoise should know, they don't really chew up third food. I have always chopped any treats for my leopards in small pieces. I have a dog that will swallow food/treats, etc more often then chewing them up. The experience with her makes it automagic for anything that doesn't do much chewing.

 

[vladimir]

Is there any tortoise equivalent of the heimlich maneuver?

 

[wellington]

Is there any tortoise equivalent of the heimlich maneuver?

The best that one could probably do is to point the tortoises head down and butt up and try to get it out by carefully swinging it. Also could try to massage under the neck hoping it might massage it down. Both of these of course if you can pick up the tort and if it's head isnt tucked to reach the neck. Heck at that point I might even try a blast of water from a hose or try putting a broom handle or similar depending on tort size and pushing it down. If it's going to suffocate anyway, try everything.

 

[Tom]

Thank you for sharing this.

 

[Loni]

Tragic...thank you so much for sharing.

 

[EllieMay]

I am glad to know this as well.. you can never be too careful. Thanks!

 

[ascott]

FYI​

~ I was recently contacted by one of our customers that had several of our tortoises. The one in question was hatched in 2011 and was in overall fantastic health. It appears that the tortoise had choked on a piece of carrot, suffocating it. The owner is obviously devastated.

~ I also had a recent conversation with another one of our customers that shared with me of a person who had just gotten a mature male Gallop and it choked on a carrot right in front of him, also suffocating.

~ My objective is to simply share these circumstances with this TFO community. We have decided to not feed our population carrots any further.

I hate carrots....ugh.

 

[bouaboua]

Very sad for those owners but thank you for the warning.

 

[ALDABRAMAN]

Is there any tortoise equivalent of the heimlich maneuver?

~ I don't think so. If you watch closely, you will notice that they just bite and swallow. My thoughts are that carrots are just two hard and may have simply lodged in a way that the piece had gotten stuck. Tragedy for sure, however carrots are just harder that most vegetables and fruits. We are simply not offering carrots any further.

 

[Jay Bagley]

Wow, that really is tragic. Thank you for sharing.

 

[Oxalis]

Thank you for passing this along. My Russian tort actually had a slight issue with a cucumber slice; he had taken a bit too big of a bite. He was fine, but I was definitely worried for a second!! I haven't offered it since, but if I do, I will be cutting it up into smaller pieces for him. It's always good with tortoise keeping to be proactive! Best wishes.

 

[Maro2Bear]

Ive seen our Sully cough/choke once or twice while taking large bites out of a full cuttlebone. He takes big bites then swallows...I’m now tempted to break the cuttlefish bone up in to smaller bitesize pieces.

Anyone else have such an issue?

 

[TammyJ]

I am very sorry that this happened to the Aldabra. But I think that I would just apply the "no big pieces" law to just carrots for now. It seems that they are particularly dangerous as a choking hazard! I leave large pieces of cuttlebone and large pieces of mango, cactus, and other items for my redfoots as well as chopping/grating and mixing the items sometimes, often depending on how much time I have to devote to the preparation. So far, so good. But I am grateful for the warning about carrots! I will never feed them in large pieces even if I am in a hurry.

 

[ben awes]

Wow! Tragic for the animal and owner. Very sorry to hear. Thank you for sharing because it is an excellent public service announcement. I feed my animals carrots, and on occasion full carrots for them to bit. I have figured it's good for their bite strength and wearing down the beak. There are not a lot of food that they have to firmly bite and I figured carrots would be excellent - but I too will stop feeding full carrots. Peals only I guess!

 

[Kasia]

Thank you for passing this along. My Russian tort actually had a slight issue with a cucumber slice; he had taken a bit too big of a bite. He was fine, but I was definitely worried for a second!! I haven't offered it since, but if I do, I will be cutting it up into smaller pieces for him. It's always good with tortoise keeping to be proactive! Best wishes.

I noticed the same thing, they are greedy eaters. I cut very thin slices and hand feed treats like cucumber or carrots to make sure nothing wrong will happen. I can not even imagine how devastaded owners of those torts must be.

 

[Nursemomzie]

How devastating! This has got me really thinking about what I give my baby leopard. I was cutting up spineless prickly pear cactus, but I don't think I could get the pieces small enough to prevent a choking hazard. I think I'm going to hold off until she's bigger. Thank you for sharing.