Nares Flushing

[EppsDynasty]

Came across this study and am using it as a guide to treat two Desert Tortoises. My family lives in between the Mojave and Death Valley Deserts and LOVE CDT's. We are a little intimidated by the "flipping over" but want to give our tortoises the best treatment. Any opinions or thoughts would be greatly appreciated. There is a ENORMOUS need for desert tortoise homes here. We want to educate ourselves and learn best treatment practices.

 

[EppsDynasty]

Should we wait until all discharge is gone from nares before returning to their outdoor pen. Right now they are in a room kept at 85 degrees 24 hours a day. The female is really active now, but still has a little "snot". Neither is eating yet, but thought some running around outside might help.

 

[Tom]

Should we wait until all discharge is gone from nares before returning to their outdoor pen. Right now they are in a room kept at 85 degrees 24 hours a day. The female is really active now, but still has a little "snot". Neither is eating yet, but thought some running around outside might help.

Hello and welcome. Let's start with explaining that almost all of the care that you've seen previously for these guys is all wrong and following that misguided, often repeated, wrong advice results in the death of many a desert tortoise.

A uniform temp of 85 is not good for this species. They need it cooler at night, and they need to be able to warm up to near 100 during the day, either in the sun or under a bank of basking flood lamps.

No need to flip them over. Better to pick the up and place them on a small upside down bucket or large plastic tub. This will immobilize them with their feet in the air, so that you can treat them when necessary.

Also, they should never live in pairs.

Read this and look for the temperate species care sheet ear the bottom:

Info For New People. Please Read This First.

Hello and welcome to tortoiseforum.org! We are all glad you are here! There is no other forum like this anywhere. We have tens of thousands of members from all over the world ranging from kids with their first tortoise to people who have been breeding and keeping high end tortoises since the...

tortoiseforum.org

 

[Yvonne G]

Hi Dana:

In your climate I'd go ahead and put them outside during the day as long as there's shade but bring them in at night.

Bubbly or snotty nose isn't always due to R.I., but also due to stress. It's stressful living in pairs and stressful being taken out of their territory. Try to minimize stress much as possible.

To get them interested in eating again you can offer the "forbidden fruit" so to speak. Not necessarily fruit per se, but things like iceburg lettuce. Some tortoises have an affinity for red and yellow, so if you can find edible flowers in those colors, try that.

 

[Yvonne G]

By the way, thank you for the PDF file. It's written by a well known tortoise vet, and worthy of reading and saving.

 

[EppsDynasty]

So the backstory on these two is as follows... They lived together in Lancaster, CA area for 30 yrs. We received threm and housed them in an enclosure together with no issues for 2 months. Stupidly we put a sulcata of same size in the enclosure for a couple days, to get another pen built. I know now this was a idiot decision causing stress. they both stopped eating shortly thereafter with clear runny nares. since the cause was stress we believed we put them in a bedroom kept at 85 degrees. Hoping this would resolve the problem we kept a close eye on them trying to entice eating with no luck. Then thick mucus discharge started with closed eyes. Carrot soaks fixed the eyes just as @Yvonne G"s thread says. With no vet in our area we could find. That is when we came across this study online. We do flushes of saline every other day and every 5th day a flush with a 3 mg. Enrofloxacin solution, total of 3 times now for antibiotics. Thickness is gone clear runny nares is all there is now. We are letting the room heat up during the day to our ambient temps, 90-100 degrees. But at night keep a heater set to 85 to not let it get cooler than that.
We WILL SEPARATE even though we believe the initial cause was stress. Its hard to set our human emotion aside but it is what is best we now know.
Their enclosure will be a 40'x60' split now for a 40'x30'. Should we move them out into their enclosures now or wait until eating? Learning what stress to impose at what to wait for is what we are learning. Their enclosure will be the original one they were in just split, and of course never a roommate ever again. This will hopefully lessen stress imposed on them being it was theirs to begin with. Thank you very much for the help and advice going to try colored flowers for sure.

 

[Tom]

So the backstory on these two is as follows... They lived together in Lancaster, CA area for 30 yrs. We received threm and housed them in an enclosure together with no issues for 2 months. Stupidly we put a sulcata of same size in the enclosure for a couple days, to get another pen built. I know now this was a idiot decision causing stress. they both stopped eating shortly thereafter with clear runny nares. since the cause was stress we believed we put them in a bedroom kept at 85 degrees. Hoping this would resolve the problem we kept a close eye on them trying to entice eating with no luck. Then thick mucus discharge started with closed eyes. Carrot soaks fixed the eyes just as @Yvonne G"s thread says. With no vet in our area we could find. That is when we came across this study online. We do flushes of saline every other day and every 5th day a flush with a 3 mg. Enrofloxacin solution, total of 3 times now for antibiotics. Thickness is gone clear runny nares is all there is now. We are letting the room heat up during the day to our ambient temps, 90-100 degrees. But at night keep a heater set to 85 to not let it get cooler than that.
We WILL SEPARATE even though we believe the initial cause was stress. Its hard to set our human emotion aside but it is what is best we now know.
Their enclosure will be a 40'x60' split now for a 40'x30'. Should we move them out into their enclosures now or wait until eating? Learning what stress to impose at what to wait for is what we are learning. Their enclosure will be the original one they were in just split, and of course never a roommate ever again. This will hopefully lessen stress imposed on them being it was theirs to begin with. Thank you very much for the help and advice going to try colored flowers for sure.

If they are used to the great outdoors, then I would continue with that. The natural light and the day to night cycle should improve their appetite.

A heated shelter like the one in the thread I linked for you will keep them warmer at night and safe from any predators or vermin. The shelter will also help you ease them into, and out of, brumation correctly too, when that time comes in the fall.

 

[TammyJ]

Bright yellow pumpkin vine flowers are great and they should love them!

 

[EppsDynasty]

I bring this old thread up because:
We let both have their own space in separate enclosures. Both dug their own burrows and nares cleared up. We still kept a close eye on them for signs of mucus and none.
The female would come out over the last 12 days but no male, not once. Yesterday I dug up the burrow to retrieve him and see what the deal is. When I pulled him out he had a big drip of clear mucus coming out of the nares. Not again, so I brought him in and gave him a good soak for 1 1/2 hrs., then tried to see if he would eat, he did eat voraciously. We tried to feed him because the female has been eating foliage in her pen. Today we took these pics and you can see no mucus and a dry "nose" What should we do next? put him back out? Keep him in all winter heated and feed? It looks like the mucus he is just "sucking" back in. Lost we are, opinions and knowledge we seek.
On another note see his 2 chin lumps, they catch on his gular. Are these bad, or a result of catching on the gular and nothing. Thank you for the help in advance!

 

[Yvonne G]

Those lumps are glands that swell to show his condition for mating.

Desert tortoises stop eating a month or so before brumation in order to clear out the digestive tract. That's probably what your male was doing before you dug him out. Since he has had a meal, he has to start all over again. I'm thinking you're in the desert tortoise's home range, right? Put him back out but stop offering food.

If you think there's mucous in the nose you can give a couple brisk squirts of sterile saline in each nostril to flush the mucous into his mouth.

 

[EppsDynasty]

I was afraid of that

Those lumps are glands that swell to show his condition for mating.

Desert tortoises stop eating a month or so before brumation in order to clear out the digestive tract. That's probably what your male was doing before you dug him out. Since he has had a meal, he has to start all over again. I'm thinking you're in the desert tortoise's home range, right? Put him back out but stop offering food.

If you think there's mucous in the nose you can give a couple brisk squirts of sterile saline in each nostril to flush the mucous into his mouth.

A very over reactive parent is what your telling me...I was so worried about the mucus issue coming back and preventing him from doing the natural thing, and healthily, that I stepped in and prevented that from happening. A learning experience this definitely was. Thank you