Marking Medium

[Itort]

I am wondering what is the best medium for marking the carapace of torts? I have 6 black mountain torts that I want to track growth on.

 

[Yvonne G]

I am wondering what is the best medium for marking the carapace of torts? I have 6 black mountain torts that I want to track growth on.

Do you mean marking each individual tortoise to distinguish it from the others? Or do you mean tracing each tortoise on a piece of paper to show how much he's grown?

An accepted way to mark tortoises is to take a small triangular file and file a notch in a marginal scute. One notch for this tortoise, two notches for that one. A notch on the other side for that one, etc. Just be careful to not go too deeply.

Another way people mark their tortoises is to drop a small drop of nail polish in the very center of a scute. One drop, two drops, a pink drop, a red drop, etc.

When you have a lot of one type of tortoise, like you do, its always a good idea to have them identified, so you can be sure each one is getting his fair share of food, etc.


Yvonne

 

[brummytort]

I am wondering what is the best medium for marking the carapace of torts? I have 6 black mountain torts that I want to track growth on.

Hi there,

Id go for the nail varnish as mentioned above - I personally would not like to file into a tortoises shell.

 

[Itort]

I'll go with polish. Chalk and livestock crayon was quite literally a wash. LOL

 

[Yvonne G]

I agree, I use nail polish on mine and would never cut into the shell as it is living tissue and as such open to infection and even worse, pain to the tortoise. I think here in UK this would be illegal, must check on that for future reference.
Take care
Sue

If you will notice, I did caution against cutting in too deeply. Notching a marginal scute is standard practice with zoos and scientific studies:

http://www.azgfd.gov/pdfs/w_c/tortoise/Monitoring Plot Protocol.pdf

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V5X-3WTNCVH-3&_user=10&

http://www.jstor.org/pss/3892905

http://www.desertfishes.org/cuatroc/organisms/turtles.html

http://www.jwildlifedis.org/cgi/reprint/37/3/427.pdf

Yvonne

 

[Crazy1]

I simply used a sharpie ink pen on one of the marginal scutes and its been almost a year (on an outside adult DT) and it is still there. By the way I have three DT and they are marked 1,2,3. And Sharpies come in all kind of colors now.