Does anyone use the soak water to water your plants?
Soak Water
- Thread starter TriciaStringer
- Start date
tortoiseplanet
Active Member
Why not? It’s better to put it to use than put it down the drain.
I did it this morning and wondered if anyone else does it. I like to put the poop in the composter so figured I’d use her poopy soak water for my plants.
daniellenc
Well-Known Member
I toss it in my plants often. Glad I’m not the only weirdo
I do. Most of the time.
be super careful if you have dogs or cats, make sure they have no access to the parts watered with reptile feces, the later are good for the plants but will kill your felines and dogs if ingested, reptilian enzymes are dangerous, but hell yeah, i use that water in their own enclosure, of course
Jay Bagley
Well-Known Member
My dog Chase gobbled up one of Sheldon's turds one day, should I be concerned?be super careful if you have dogs or cats, make sure they have no access to the parts watered with reptile feces, the later are good for the plants but will kill your felines and dogs if ingested, reptilian enzymes are dangerous, but hell yeah, i use that water in their own enclosure, of course
tortoiseplanet
Active Member
My dog does it all the time.
Jay Bagley
Well-Known Member
I figured he'd be okay, that dog eats everything
I don't know where you read that, but decades of first hand experience have proven that to be a false statement.be super careful if you have dogs or cats, make sure they have no access to the parts watered with reptile feces, the later are good for the plants but will kill your felines and dogs if ingested, reptilian enzymes are dangerous, but hell yeah, i use that water in their own enclosure, of course
I work with dozens of dogs on a daily basis. Lets just say I've seen plenty of tortoise turds eaten with nor harm done. In fact it tends to firm up the dog's stool due to the high fiber content.
I don't recommend letting dogs or cats eat reptile feces, but if they do, its not going to hurt them unless the reptile is shedding copious quantities of salmonella or some other pathogen.
No.
Jay Bagley
Well-Known Member
Thanks Tom. Yeah I kind of knew he would be okay, that was just my roundabout and indirect way of asking what facts that statement was based upon.
You are more tactful and diplomatic than I am.
CarolM
Well-Known Member
In drought stricken Cape Town that goes without saying. Absolutely. Every bit of water must be used at least twice.
it went like this: i stepped in tortoise sh+t. the dog licked my shoe, two days later she was dead, liquified inside. when taken to the emergency room 24 hours from onset the doctors had no idea what it was. they did the blood work, ruled out parvo, salmonella, and some other crazy word i never heard of, and said they have never seen anything like that. i told them about the shoe and they could say nothing but recommend the treatment for parvo. it didnt work. she was dead in my arms hours later. salmonella? it was not, what it was i do not know. the tortoise is red foot and is thriving and parasite free as i deworm my meat eaters. the doctor did say that it had something to do with the enzymes and the way some reptiles break down protein by liquifying it in their stomachs. some reptiles even contain those enzymes in their saliva and when they bite a much larger prey they just hang around until the animal is liquified. this is something from the blue planet series, comodo dragons for instance. you can disagree but this is what happened, judge for yourself. I now have a 4 foot wall around all pens and a pair of shoes that stays in pens and never goes out. i got a ptsd from this experience, if you think your dog should take the chance, so be it. so as you can see i did not read this anywhere, just a friendly advise. i just do not want anyone to go through what i did.
I'm very sorry for your loss, but with out necropsy and positive diagnosis of the COD, we are just guessing. There is nothing in tortoise poo, not bacteria or "enzyme" that is going to liquify a dog's insides in 48 hours. I can think of lots of other possibilities, but eating tortoise poop isn't one of them. I would guess that a large percentage of the people who own tortoises also own dogs, and it is inevitable that the dog will eat, or lick, some tortoise poo at some point. Yet these dogs don't die.
I don't know what happened to your dog, but licking tortoise poop off of your shoe was not the COD.
My condolences concerning the dog, and were I in your shoes, I may respond the same way, but this whole bit about dog killing tortoise scat sounds very strange to me. What exactly would be the physical mechanism by which this takes place? I've not owned a dog in a decade, but when I did, he ate lots of tortoise poop. I had a sulcata at the time, and his grassy scat would blow everywhere, and of course I'd let the goofy pooch out for a few minutes to relieve himself, and he would return from the grass with a big grassy turd hanging from his mouth. So my experience mirrors Tom's in this respect, and so by my view, the simplest explanation is that correlation took place here, not necessarily causation. I would also think that this would be a much more common occurrence in nature, or, to speak, a more well documented one. Coyotes here in South Texas consume an inordinate amount of feces as a part of their diet, and it wouldn't surprise me if they tried some tortoise droppings. Would they suffer similarly to a dog? Is this something unique to dogs, or does it afflict all mammals, because I've kept cats as rodent control on my property, and I've never had a problem? Are these enzymes restricted solely to the feces and saliva of the tortoise, or do they exist in the bloodstream as well? Because I've had two of my tortoises in the past get mauled to death by neighbors' dogs, and those dogs didn't die from the experience.
I mean no disrespect in my questioning of any of this. I'm absolutely of the belief that separation of dogs and tortoises is a good idea, but my thoughts on this are toward the safety of the tortoise. I've never known harm to come to a dog by mixing these two creatures. That being said, I'd be very curious as to what happened in this particular instance exactly. If this death is, in fact, caused by the tortoise, I would very much be interested in knowing how this happened. Is this a danger lurking beneath the surface that we have all been lucky to avoid thus far, or was it an isolated incident involving this particular dog and this particular tortoise? Is the COD something else entirely? Sadly, we may not know in this particular case, but I would be interested in hearing from someone with a biology background on this matter.
T.G.
I mean no disrespect in my questioning of any of this. I'm absolutely of the belief that separation of dogs and tortoises is a good idea, but my thoughts on this are toward the safety of the tortoise. I've never known harm to come to a dog by mixing these two creatures. That being said, I'd be very curious as to what happened in this particular instance exactly. If this death is, in fact, caused by the tortoise, I would very much be interested in knowing how this happened. Is this a danger lurking beneath the surface that we have all been lucky to avoid thus far, or was it an isolated incident involving this particular dog and this particular tortoise? Is the COD something else entirely? Sadly, we may not know in this particular case, but I would be interested in hearing from someone with a biology background on this matter.
T.G.
red foots are not fully herbivorous like sulcatas, they eat meat, eggs, bugs. I am not saying it was the TORTOISE poo per se. I am saying the poo came from the meat eater (redfoot that is a foot long, so it was a big log, lol, pardon my french). maybe something colonized it meanwhile. the vet had no idea, she said she would do more research but never came back to me, i called, they said they still had no clue. it could be something very similar to parvo ( because it ran exactly the same with same symptoms but was way too fast) but more aggressive and much faster, and it lives in poo in my yard apparently, a different strand, a new more resilient version, I do not know. my dogs are pillow pugs, they live indoors, they never chew or even lick anything outside, they are picky about their meat and everything else, the dog was playing with my foot and the shoe got in her mouth, just a freak accident, five seconds in her mouth and whatever it was it was fast, she was rushed to er same night. by all means let your dogs eat the poo, I will not, i will not make it through another ptsd.
