Hatchling Growth Rates

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Tom

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Here I go again... :) The highly variable growth rates of hatchlings has always perplexed me. There always seem to be some variables from one household to the next, and it's pretty easy to see how the growth of siblings that go to different homes can accelerate or slow down given all the possible differences in care, diet, temps and enclosures. Often though, the difference can't seem to be explained. Many times I have raised multiple tortoises in the same enclosure, with the same diet and routine, but some just grow faster than others. In my case it certainly wasn't lack of hydration. I did notice that some individuals just liked to be in the humid hide box more than others. These individuals always grew faster and smoother. In the past I used open toped enclosures. Even though I humidified the room and covered most of the top, the air in there was pretty dry. It made sense to me that the ones in the humid hide box all the time were losing less water through respiration, and therefore staying a little more hydrated. In that case the tortoises own behavior seemed to be making a difference.

Recently I bought 20 sulcata hatchlings that were roughly two weeks old. I kept 14. My friend kept 6. We had very high hopes and expected nothing but success based on our previous experience with hatchlings. We were using different methods for housing and raising them, but both of our methods had always been successful in the past. Here is where mine are housed:
1cjzc.jpg

As time went by both my friend and I started experiencing the same phenomenon. Roughly 1/3 were doing great. Thriving, growing, excelling in every way. Another third were doing okay. Nothing great, but not bad either. The last third were not doing well. Little growth. Not as active, not thriving. The self doubt started immediately, but nothing added up. Even if I was doing something wrong, I knew my friend wasn't. They were only 10-14 days old when we got them. What could have gone wrong in that short of a time? I had two theories. Theory #1: The breeder keeps them dry. He soaks once a week and keeps them on dry hay. Could THAT much damage be done that quickly? And why were some fine and others not? I speculated it had to do with timing. If Monday was soak day, a tortoise that hatched Sat or Sun would get a soak pretty early on. If the tortoise hatched Monday after soaking time was over, or Tuesday, he'd have to wait an entire week under hot lights in a dry room on dry substrate to get his first drink of water into his tiny little body. The spectrum of health we were seeing could be due to the multiple days of the week that they could hatch on in relation to whatever the one soak day a week was. Theory #2: This breeder does not use a brooder box. He lets them hatch and leaves them in the incubator on their vermiculite until they absorb their yolk sac, and then moves them into their dry enclosures. I speculated that they could be impacted. I move my hatchlings to a brooder box with damp paper towels as a substrate as soon as they step out of their egg. I put greens in there with them because they will eat the paper towels if I don't. One friend uses damp wash cloths instead of paper towels for this reason. Still, after a couple of weeks when I finally see their first poop, their is often sparkly flecks of vermiculite in their first couple of BMs. Baby sulcatas eat their nesting substrate and it takes about a week for them to fully absorb their yolk sac. All that time sitting in their incubators, they are eating the substrate. My friend who incubates his leopards in the ground has told me that when they come up, there is nothing but dirt left in those holes. No eggshells, no poop from the mother, no dud eggs, no nothing. There is no doubt that artificially incubated babies are sitting there for a few days and ingesting the incubation medium. I suspected impaction might be the reason for the failure to thrive of some of my new babies.

Three of the 20 died.

Let that sink in for a minute...

In my WHOLE life, even during my "dry" years, I have NEVER lost a hatchling. Neither had my friend.

Another seven of the 20 have hardly grown at all. I decided that finding out what was going on and learning something about what was causing this awful phenomenon for so many people was of the utmost importance. I decided to necropsy two of them. My vet decided to only charge me her cost in the name of advancing science. I told her about my two theories and we paid particular attention to those aspects. The organs were sent off to specialists for examination and evaluation and she went through the digestive tract herself. I've been sitting on the results for a while now. I have shared them with multiple reptile vets and tortoise experts. All conclusions are speculative at best, but everyone has unanimously come to the same conclusions given all the facts.

The GI tracts of both of theses babies were lined with a thick "sandy sludge". I told her they were on course orchid bark or plain planting soil. No sand. No sand ever anywhere. I asked if the "sludge" had shiny flecks in it. She said yes. I asked if it could be vermiculite. Her eyes lit up. Yes. That is what it was. Their entire GI tracts were loaded with broken down semi-digested wet vermiculite dust. I sat on this info and thought about it while we waited for the results from the organ exams. Theory number two seemed to be gaining ground.

The results finally came in from the tissue samples and it was a mixed bag. There were multiple issues. The organs were not healthy and there were secondary bacterial infections taking hold. This muddied the waters a bit. I suspected organ failure due to chronic dehydration as theory number one, but these organs had multiple issues going on. It wasn't simple cell damage due to dehydration. Was theory one still a possibility?

Here is what the experts have all told me in independent discussions: The intestinal obstruction resulted in a lack of nutrition, a weakened immune system and eventually septicemia and bacterial infections of the organs. All speculated the the organ damage and infection was a secondary issue and a direct result of the sludge filled intestinal tract. Some of the tortoises were able to pass the obstructive material through and some were not. Some ate more substrate, some ate less. This could account for the differences in health between the hatchlings.

The results of this were a bit surprising to me. For the last couple of years it has seemed to me that chronic dehydration was the cause of most of these "hatchling failure syndrome" cases. In fact, it now seems that failure to use a brooder box, and the resulting incubation media ingestion, is a more likely cause. Over time, I have become more and more aware of the huge number of breeders who skip this step.

To demonstrate that this is NOT a husbandry issue, here is a picture of the entire enclosure:
v2z2aq.jpg

It is 4x8x2'. There is a 10" divider in the middle. All 14 of my inconsistent purchased babies were housed on the right hand side. On the left hand side are 6 babies that I hatched myself out of my adults and started from day one. All six of mine are thriving and growing at the same rate as the top third of the other group. Each group gets exactly the same routine, food and conditions. On one side of the divider I have 100% success. On the other side I have only 5 out of 14 thriving. This should make it clear that whatever is going on is a direct result of whatever went on before they came to me.

Looks like we'll have to start asking an additional question of anyone we want to buy a baby tortoise from...
 

pemry3

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Thank you for sharing. This is very interesting information and clearly a very crucial element of hatchling husbandry. Again I find this fascinating, and I personally thank you for digging deeper and sharing sharing your findings.
 

LuckysGirl007

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Wow! Thanks for taking the time to look into this and share this information with us. Very interesting.
 

wellington

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WOW, that is great Tom. So glad for your passion and that you have the room and means to put so much into these studies. So, to put in very simple terms. Sulcata hatchlings left in the incubator on the vermiculite after hatching could possibly be sick and die well after the new owner gets them. Do you know how many days yours lived before they finally succumbed to the illness?
This would probably affect any species that will eat what ever is left in their nest correct? Seems there are a lot of sick RF being purchased lately. However, it doesn't seem like the death rate is as high as the sulcatas.
Thanks for sharing, you know I love your threads:)
 

SamB

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All I can say is W O W!

Thanks Tom for sharing this info
 

lovelyrosepetal

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Thanks Tom. This information should be able to help not only the breeders who hatch the babies, but also the owners who buy the babies. It is so sad that so many failed to survive. Will you be able to recoup your losses at all? I am so sorry that you had to go through this experience. While, it is great that you were able to bring this to light, I feel horrible for your loss. It must have made you feel terrible to go through this.
 

mainey34

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Definitely a great post. Unfortunately you had to go thru the time and expense of it
 

kanalomele

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Thanks for your dedication. I think all of us who have hatchlings should pay such close attention.
 

janevicki

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I also thank you Tom for this information, it is good to know for the future. It saddens me that there where causalties with your purchased sulcata hatchlings, and possible sickness to the remaining ones.:( Please update us on the status of the remaining sulcata hatchlings.
 

Tom

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There doesn't appear to be any "sickness" with the remaining ones. None of them were ever sick in the sense of something contagious. They just had a mechanical blockage. The remaining ones are doing excellent. They are growing super healthy and smoothly, and always have been. These one's have never showed any sign of any problem, and that was one of the perplexing things about this group. How could some of them be the most perfect babies I've ever raised, while some of them were doing extremely poorly. They all came from the same place, at the same time, lived in the same enclosure, and were all roughly the same age.

What this has made me think of is all the noobs who get a tortoise from a breeder who does things the way the breeder of these guys does, and the thing just doesn't thrive even though they seem to be doing everything right, and all of us are advising them and trying to help. How frustrating must that be? Meanwhile someone else they know got one from the same source at the same time and there is doing great? The speculation and implications would be obvious, yet totally incorrect. The new keeper would likely be blamed by the breeder and everyone else, when, in fact, they did everything right. Most of these big breeders do not hold back 20 of their hatchlings and raise them for six months just to verify that what they have been doing for decades still "works". Every one of them that I have talked to thinks everything is fine. Yet, when you dig deep enough and ask the right questions, they will tell you all about some of the things that aren't quite right. One guy held back a bunch of captive leopard hatchlings right before the ban on importation went into effect. He told me half of them died and the half that lived are stunted and "extremely pyramided". "Horribly disfigured" even, according to him. Yet when I suggest hydration and a humid hide box would prevent that, he balked. This is one of the largest breeders of tortoises in the whole world. He has the evidence right in front of him, but won't see it. His decades of SETTING the status quo prevent him from learning new thing. Still... I think I may have planted a seed in his head that day when I showed him pics of MY leopards that are just the opposite of horribly disfigured or dead... Time will tell...
 

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Hey Tom! Who's your friend?!?! ;) I think both theories should be delved deeper into by purchasing one of the trios and incubating the eggs ourselves.
 

DesertGrandma

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I am totally intrigued by this. As you may remember Tom, I lost my first leopard tort baby that came from a very reputable breeder and never knew for sure what happened. I chalked it up to hatchling failure because I knew in my heart I had done everything "the right way." And since then, I have had success with subsequent hatchlings with no problems. Now I wonder...how often do breeders check their incubators for new hatchlings? If they don't check it every day, and some hatch out only to sit for a few days eating substrate before they are noticed, could your new theory apply? Also, at what age did these hatchlings die, how long until they succumbed? Very good info here Tom. Thank you so much for posting it.


This also makes me wonder about the incubation medium and if there is something more suitable than vermiculite.
 

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Good information here, and I think it opens the door to more questions.

This makes me think of the artificial incubation process as a whole. Of all the hatchlings I have produced, I have lost three despite spot on husbandry with me and the people they eventually went to. With each of my tortoises that were artificially incubated, I remove the eggs after pipping and place them in a container with a paper towel so I can rule out the ingestion of vermiculite. When I compare the hatchlings that were artificially incubated to the ones I left in the ground, the ones in the ground are significantly more active, eat more, their shells harden faster, and overall appear a lot healthier. I think there's still a lot of other "breeder questions" we need to figure out, but your experience certainly sheds light on something I'm sure few others have even considered.
 

Tom

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I have an idea. We see lots of babies that don't make it here on the forum. This is terribly sad, and some members have left the forum because it saddens them so much. For the owners of these little unfortunate souls, I'm sure it is devastating.

Let's make something positive out of a negative. When we have these deaths, let's spend the money to find out what the state of their GI tract is. Obviously this will be a case by case basis. My vet does this for me at cost, in the name of science. Let's all work together to really study this and find out why so many hatchlings are dying. What we learn with sulcatas will offer some benefit to other species too. I can think of a handful of breeders here on the forum that NEVER lose a single baby. Why are so many dying that come from other breeders? I think impaction from incubation medium AND chronic dehydration are both factors. The ONLY way to find out is to spend the money and do the necropsy. I am willing to pay for this for any one who lives in the Southern CA area and can get their deceased baby to me.

When the cause of death can be determined, the breeder should be contacted and a refund given or a replacement offered. If some of the big breeders are forced to give out dozens of refunds, you can bet they will re-examine their practices and start learning better ways to do things.
 

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Neal said:
Good information here, and I think it opens the door to more questions.

This makes me think of the artificial incubation process as a whole. Of all the hatchlings I have produced, I have lost three despite spot on husbandry with me and the people they eventually went to. With each of my tortoises that were artificially incubated, I remove the eggs after pipping and place them in a container with a paper towel so I can rule out the ingestion of vermiculite. When I compare the hatchlings that were artificially incubated to the ones I left in the ground, the ones in the ground are significantly more active, eat more, their shells harden faster, and overall appear a lot healthier. I think there's still a lot of other "breeder questions" we need to figure out, but your experience certainly sheds light on something I'm sure few others have even considered.

Could the ones left in the ground be healthier because as Tom has said, about what his friend noticed missing from the nest. Everything. All the shell, poop, everything was gone from the nest. When dogs have puppies, it is a healthy thing to let the mother eat all the sacks and after birth, then she nurses the pups. All the stuff she is eating is for a more nutrient milk for her pups. Maybe that is what the artificial hatched torts are missing. What ever is left in the nest by the mother, if anything,
but also, the shells, poop, etc.
 

Neal

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wellington said:
Could the ones left in the ground be healthier because as Tom has said, about what his friend noticed missing from the nest. Everything. All the shell, poop, everything was gone from the nest. When dogs have puppies, it is a healthy thing to let the mother eat all the sacks and after birth, then she nurses the pups. All the stuff she is eating is for a more nutrient milk for her pups. Maybe that is what the artificial hatched torts are missing. What ever is left in the nest by the mother, if anything,
but also, the shells, poop, etc.

It could be. The nests that I have seen have still had shell fragments, but not a lot, and my females don't leave poop in the nests. At least, not that I've seen yet.
 

wellington

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Tom said:
I have an idea. We see lots of babies that don't make it here on the forum. This is terribly sad, and some members have left the forum because it saddens them so much. For the owners of these little unfortunate souls, I'm sure it is devastating.

Let's make something positive out of a negative. When we have these deaths, let's spend the money to find out what the state of their GI tract is. Obviously this will be a case by case basis. My vet does this for me at cost, in the name of science. Let's all work together to really study this and find out why so many hatchlings are dying. What we learn with sulcatas will offer some benefit to other species too. I can think of a handful of breeders here on the forum that NEVER lose a single baby. Why are so many dying that come from other breeders? I think impaction from incubation medium AND chronic dehydration are both factors. The ONLY way to find out is to spend the money and do the necropsy. I am willing to pay for this for any one who lives in the Southern CA area and can get their deceased baby to me.

When the cause of death can be determined, the breeder should be contacted and
a refund given or a replacement offered. If some of the big breeders are forced to give out dozens of refunds, you can bet they will re-examine their practices and start learning better ways to do things.

That would be great Tom. But I doubt most have the extra money to pay for something like that. I know, just to walk into the exotic vets office here in Chicago, it's 95.00. They won't even do a stool sample without a vet visit first. It might be possible, for some of them to print out your threads about the new hatchling syndrome and also this thread and present it to their vet. Maybe they would also get a break, seeing how it would be more of a scientific research thing, rather then just a pet owner wanting to know. Maybe some of the veterinarian members could offer their services for the ones in their area, and possibly, ask some of their vet friends to also participate. Good luck with this great study. I don't wish anyone to loose their new little tort. However, if they do. I sure hope they can and will participate in this.


Neal said:
wellington said:
Could the ones left in the ground be healthier because as Tom has said, about what his friend noticed missing from the nest. Everything. All the shell, poop, everything was gone from the nest. When dogs have puppies, it is a healthy thing to let the mother eat all the sacks and after birth, then she nurses the pups. All the stuff she is eating is for a more nutrient milk for her pups. Maybe that is what the artificial hatched torts are missing. What ever is left in the nest by the mother, if anything,
but also, the shells, poop, etc.

It could be. The nests that I have seen have still had shell fragments, but not a lot, and my females don't leave poop in the nests. At least, not that I've seen yet.

I wasn't sure if the poop that was missing from the nest of Toms friend was suppose to be from the mother or the babies? I assumed the babies. However, I have no idea what a female does or deposits when laying.
 

Tom

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This may be different for different species. I find poop from the mother in every nest I dig up. When I set up my brooder boxes I give them their eggshell (with any vermiculite rinsed off) to nibble one. They always eat at least some of it along with any greens.

My babies that hatched in the ground this year are not any different than my artificially incubated ones. Activity level and appetite are the same. Appearance is a little different due to raising them so differently.
 
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