Tony the Tort42
Active Member
Agreed. Maybe like Jamie said, get him tested for worms. Has he grown at all?
My torts and enclosure
- Thread starter joebonz
- Start date
joebonz
New Member
It's doubtful he's had worms for 4 years and if he did the others would surely have gotten them also.
My guess would be that he was either incubated on perlite, or not kept hydrated enough after hatching.
joebonz
New Member
The three were all fed the same, hydrated the same, etc.
I understand that.
Either of the two problems I mentioned can have variable effects and for a variety of reasons. I bought 2 dozen Sudan sulcatas that were all incubated on perlite and started dry. I kept 16 and my buddy Dean kept 8. Almost exactly one third of his and mine failed to thrive. One third did mediocre, and one third seemed totally fine and grew normally. Necropsy revealed that the failing ones had ingested perlite and couldn't pass it. Who knows why?
Now imagine if 24 individual people had bought those 24 babies. 8 of those people would tell you that baby tortoises are difficult to keep alive even though they did everything right. They would feel like they failed and were terrible tortoise keepers. Another 8 people would say that their baby is doing fine, though growing slower than some of the other ones they've seen for unknown reasons. The last 8 people would tell you how easy it is and in some cases, they would assume the others were doing something wrong and even tell them so. Many people come to me after suffering through one of these "Breeder Failure Syndrome" babies and buy one of mine. They tell me the difference is night and day. They can't believe what a difference those first few weeks can make.
After hatching and raising 100s or 1000s of baby tortoises of multiple species and housing and feeding them in a variety of ways over a period of decades, and watching how other breeders do it and what results they get, a person gains some insight into these matters.
If you start 100 baby tortoises in the old, wrong, dry way, some percentage of them will survive and be okay, some percentage will not survive, and some percentage will survive, but not be quite right in some way or other. Like stunted growth for example. Why are the other ones fine? No one can say. Maybe by chance one stayed out of the hot dry lights more of the time. Maybe one would drink more than the others when given the chance. Maybe one had a food preference early on for items that were a little higher in water content. No one can say for sure.
In my own enclosures, I've had some babies that preferred to stay hidden in the humid hide more often, while their cage mates with identical food and housing, chose to stay out and walk around or bask more. These behavioral patterns result in the more outgoing ones growing slower and showing minor pyramiding, while their hidden siblings grew much faster and were completely smooth.
Raise 100 babies using MY methods, and 100% of them will grow and thrive and eat anything you put in front of them. So say the people who buy them from me.
