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:
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:
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...
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:
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:
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...