eating
- Thread starter sarahm123
- Start date
tortoises cant over eat.
- Joined
- Aug 27, 2012
- Messages
- 2,226
People obsess over tortoise weight. You'll notice if he's getting plump. Don't worry until then
All animals can over eat. Even tortoises.
My vet showed me a quick way to determine body condition under the shell. (You can also gently press the visible tissue between tail and leg, but you can hurt a tort pushing on their abdomin so leave that to experienced handlers/vets). The ridge down the middle of your tortoise' shell follows his spine. A malnourished tort will have prominent ridge and have a sunk in in appearance. A fat tortoise will have very little visible ridge and sometimes the fat under the shell will cause a little fat bump on either side of the spine ridge. A healthy amount of fat is somewhere in the middle, you can still see the spinal ridge, but shell is still nicely rounded
. Now this is not 100% foolproof, but it is a way you can gage "is my tort fat?". Note this worked better with older tortoises than younger ones.
My vet showed me a quick way to determine body condition under the shell. (You can also gently press the visible tissue between tail and leg, but you can hurt a tort pushing on their abdomin so leave that to experienced handlers/vets). The ridge down the middle of your tortoise' shell follows his spine. A malnourished tort will have prominent ridge and have a sunk in in appearance. A fat tortoise will have very little visible ridge and sometimes the fat under the shell will cause a little fat bump on either side of the spine ridge. A healthy amount of fat is somewhere in the middle, you can still see the spinal ridge, but shell is still nicely rounded
. Now this is not 100% foolproof, but it is a way you can gage "is my tort fat?". Note this worked better with older tortoises than younger ones.Exactly. It's not just how much they are eating it is how much they are moving.
