Pancake tortoise general info

[Steph_84203]

Thanks for the quick reply and sending of good thoughts! I will keep everyone posted one how they are doing...It would be nice if the rain would go away so I could get them outside. Go figure its been beautifully warm and sunny until they took a down turn in health afterwhich we got one nice day to get them out (the day of the vet visit) and it has been rain and colder ever since. Have a great night everyone in tortoise land!

I'm not sure what to say about the paler mouth etc. It is good they are taking something to eat, you can wean them off the "tortoise junk food" when they are stronger-at least it keeps their intestines working etc.I guess too much sugar in fruit etc would compromise their system but aside from sweet potato its pretty low in sugars.
Prickly pear is good as its quite moist too, good fibre, high calcium. (I've been pureeing it into my home made tortoise soup)
If you have 5 days of Baytril left, you might want to see how they are after that as that is quite a few days of meds to take yet and I think they get better quite slowly.
Sending lots of good luck vibes to help John Wayne and Maple-love their names!
Hope some others comment on the mouth paleness etc for you soon.

Louise

Glad you found a way of opening their mouth-always good to exchange these tips especially using common items we may have in our homes.

 

[Steph_84203]

Hi all here to give an update on the cakers. After the metronidazole they took a down turn and a few days later at the vet we found worms in their stool. So we have panacured them now on top of the metronidazole and baytril. We took blood and took a swab of maples shell to culture. The culture still hasnt come back but the early blood work came back as follows: anemic, infection, bad ca to phosphorous ratio (bad mbd) and I think that was it. Wondering what conditions they were truely kept in before we got them as our husbandry seems sound and they don't get this bad that fast. Upset that I didn't do a intake vet visit. Anyway I was wondering if anyone out there has standard blood values for their healthy pancake torts. I ask this because the vet I am working with didn't have a healthy reference (only sick pancake tort blood to compare ours to) so she had to look at normal ranges over several tort species and these ranges were admittidly large. Treatment wise we are waiting for the culture to come back to pick a good antibiotic but we have started calcium glubonate (sp?) once a day for 30-60days. We are soaking the 2x daily because their eyes started to look sunken in and maples soak contained 1 part nolvasan to 100 parts water. We will be deworming them again in three weeks because we are still seeing worms in their soaking water even though they are not pooping in it (i bleach all the containers after each use and rinse very well). Anyways just looking for general thoughts and long shot with the blood values but thought I would ask! Have a great night all!

 

[johanna]

I just checked and I never got blood work done on mine, just a fecal smear. It isn't anything you are doing wrong. They were likely wild caught, housed with other species, no UVB, improper diet, and/or in very dirty enclosures. Likely enclosures that were too wet and harbored disease, or lacked a clean water source. So many things could have happened.
Have you had them outside yet? Mine thrive when given warm natural sunlight and fresh dandelions and yard greens (make sure you dont fertilize, herbicide, or pesticide your lawn). Also make sure you are feeding only 100% organic veggies. When their bodies are healing you dont want to also be introducing unnecessary chemicals on and in the veggies that their little bodies have to fight off as well. The more pure the environment the faster the healing. Some people may not agree with me on this last thing, but I do not use chemicals to clean anything. Just pure water to clean everything.
Good luck.

 

[expo tort]

What a sad sad story hope the get better.

 

[Steph_84203]

Sorry I have been MIA for the past little while. We had to put our ferret to sleep a week ago today and then on the 19th Maple our little pancake girl passed away. She was alive when I got home, I moved both of them out of their enclosure to disinfect it since we just finished a second round of panacure, cleaned the enclosure all up, added new substrate and put them both back in. About 30min later my friend showed up to help force feed. (we added 0.5ml critical care to be force fed along with .1ml sulfamethoxazole/trimethoprim and .05 calcium glubionate) We fed John Wayne first and then pulled out Maple and found she passed away (confirmed there was no heart beat from a vet friend so we couldnt intabate her and bring her back). I got more information from the breeder than he let on before and I'm so angry with him right now but that will be for another post and I will send an exerpt from his e-mail that he sent me. He seems like a real peice of work. I save it for another day because a)still coping with the loss of our little Maple and b)still fighting for John Wayne. JW was doing alittle better when we upped his force feeding to twice a day ie opening his eyes right away when picked up and moving alittle more when outside. However yesterday we noticed his eye was alittle runny and he blew a couple bubbles from his nose. Today his one eye was fine but the other eye was very runny and he was blowing bubbles. We gave him his breakfast and he swallowed it all down (always sure to go very slow and give breaks inbetween swallows). I put him in his bath to soak and it looked like he immediately went to guzzling water. I went to pick him up after letting him do this a bit and relized that there was some of his critical care breakfast in the water. I whipped his face off and relized that all of his breakfast was comming up slowly. I held him at an angle to let it run out of his mouth (afraid it would sit it his mouth and he would inhail it) and did this for about 1hr off and on before being able to get a hold of the vets office since it opened at 9am. I got him to the vet and she took some blood to send off again and we are starting him on more meds. He does have more red streaking on his plastron since last week when she saw him. The new meds are as follows: Metoclopramide (0.1ml IM or orally..IM until he holds stuff down), Fortaz (0.03ml IM every 72hr) Fluids (1.5ml SQ or IC...my vet from work recommends IC) in addition to the sulfamethoxazole/trimethoprim, calcium, and critical care. I am also soaking him once to twice a day depending on him (if he drinks in the soak or not behavior ect). Im so worried I am going to loose him too. Does anyone out there have experience with something like this? It is now 3:10 and he still has alittle bit of clear fluid seeping out of his mouth here and there but Im trying to let him rest alittle since he is sleeping now. I am currently working with a vet in my town who has some experience with reptiles but she is talking with my old vet from AZ who is brilliant with torts and my vet from the zoo I work at to come up with a plan of attack. Im just very scared right now for him. He seemed to be getting alittle stronger with the twice a day force feedings even this am while feeding he was biting at it alot and swallowing quicker than before but he just looks so tierd now....

 

[johanna]

This is terrible news I'm very sorry to hear about your losses. I have no experience with what you are going through. The only medical problems I've had is a prolapsed rectum.
I really hope your other one makes it though. I'd like to know what the previous owner did, or didnt do, that made them so sick. Makes me so furious.

 

[Steph_84203]

John Wayne is gone. He made it through the night but passed at some point between 9am and 12 when I took a nap. It hurts so bad right now and I am trying to decide if we should send him out for a necropsy because they shared the same air space as our sulcatas but not the same enclosure (in our tortoise room) but if I do that I may not get him back to lay to rest in our backyard. It seems like it should be a no brainer to protect the ones that are still with us, but they don't have any syptoms and I have been disinfecting my hands after doing anything with our baby cakes and the thought of not getting him back hurts no matter how selfish it is. Once everything settles down I will put more information up on the breeder I got them from to share with the community as he breeds several kinds of tortoises and lizards as well as imports wild collected ones.

 

[tortadise]

I am so sorry to hear this. Such a terrible thing to hear. I have so many tortoises, I have to utilize safe and sanitary hospital like conditions. Its like a surgical room before i go into the building. Again, I am sorry for your loss. Sometimes in situations like this a necrospy is in a beneficial outlook, to give us a more knowledge of what to look for in the future.

 

[johanna]

Sorry to hear this. From the pictures of the condition they were in and everything you told us, they were likely starved of food, proper nutrients, and UVB lighting. They may have had parasites, but the vet should have already ruled that out. They were likely dying when you got them. There was no way to save them without meds and force feeding, but with reptiles, when they are that sick, the meds and stress of administering treatment can kill them. I've seen it too many times. Its a lose lose situation.
I'm very sorry for your loss and it sickens me to think of what they went through in their lives.

 

[Tortoise]

Steph
Really sorry to hear about your babies-you did everything you could.