what should i do about ayana?

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moswen

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for those of you who don't know, ayana is my smallest sulcata hatchling. she's around a year old and 2 inches. she has no growth rings between her scutes. she may be partially blind, and she may have been bullied by mos in her old home. she has no parasites which i believe may be preventing her from being able to properly digest her food which is causing her to not get the nutrients she needs, thus causing the lack of growth... basically to possibly end in starvation, even though she's eating daily. now she's in her own container and she's doing a little better, believe it or not, i've been hand feeding her since it seems she has a hard time with finding her food.

she's been in there for a few days now. first day she hid all day and barely moved from the place i set her down. the next day she ate baby carrot food from a spoon i was holding for her. the next day she ate some cactus fruit and a small piece of kale that i also held for her. yesterday she wouldn't eat any of the greens even though i kept waving them infront of her face, and touching her nose with them, she just kept going around me. today i fed her some more cactus fruit which she gobbled up... all by herself! she didn't need me to hold it for her!

but yesterday is what upset me, she wouldn't eat the greens. normally, i would say "tough love" for a healthy tortoise, but yana hadn't eaten for a few weeks probably before i put her in her own pen. now, i don't know what's up with her other than my observations, but i don't believe cactus fruit sprinkled with vits and calcium is going to give her all she needs to become healthy again. i put bird vitamins in her water and in her morning soak, i also put a small amount of baby carrot food in her morning soaks as well. sometimes she drinks, sometimes she doesn't.

so, what should i do about her feeding regime? i know she's really delicate right now and i really am worried about starving her to get her to eat what she's given. i feel as though that will only make a bad situation worse, but i have absolutely no experience with sick tortoises. i barely have experience with healthy ones lol!!

any advice?
 

franeich

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Maybe try feeding her some moistened mazuri. I had a time when my sulcata wouldnt eat anything. I started feeding him mazuri and he would eat it. After a few days he started eating normally.
 

PeanutbuttER

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My first thought and guess was that you should try something like mazuri or grassland. It does a decent job of being well-rounded nutritionally (at least it's got more variety in it than a single green food item) which can only help if she's not eating enough to be able to intake the variety of foods she needs. When it's moistened it makes a soft easy to eat pellet.
 

Torty Mom

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What about her eating a piece of healthy tort poopie to help give her the bacteria that she needs? Maybe some of Mos's?

What do all the experts think about this?

Just a thought! :)
 

Laura

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she probably needs poop.. once she starts pooping herself.. leave it in the enclosure...
try spraying or dripping fruit juice,, Or Cactus juice onto the greens. they have a good sense of smell, and if greens smell like her fave,, she may eat them.
And try the mazuri. Im sure someone here could mail you a few pieces to try..
in fact, so could I... where are you> ? PM me if interested..
It sounds like you are doing great with her.. you have a challenge, but you are dealing with it.
 

Edna

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I think that the time for tough love would be after she's stronger and you know she's eating, maybe even showing a little growth. If she were mine, I'd be offering her anything she's ever shown a liking for, and letting her eat as much of it as she wants. Do you have a gram scale? I use mine now to weigh my torts weekly, so that I can measure growth. When I bought my gram scale, its purpose was to weigh newborn pups and monitor their intake. I'd weigh them before and after nursing, and there were a couple of times over the different litters when I saved a pup because I discovered by weighing that they weren't actually getting anything in their tummies when they nursed. You can use a gram scale to monitor her eating like that, aside from just checking for growth. Best wishes to Ayana and you!
 

exoticsdr

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the fecal gut loading is a great idea, I have believed for a long time that most of the hatchling tort deaths that I see are because they didn't get the chance to munch of some poo and get their digestive tract into a state in which they could effectively digest their own food....and careful monitoring of weight as suggested by TortyQueen is going to be your most precise way of keeping track of your progress.
 

dmmj

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I was also gonna suggest poop, so glad it is so well recommended, as for tough love that only works for healthy torts.

another healthy sulcata's poop
 

moswen

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before i separated them i watched ayana eat a lot of mos and safina's poop, i think that's what helped me come to the conclusion that she needed the bacteria. i'll start leaving her poop, but i don't hold out too much hope on that. i don't know why she's not getting it from them, they both have parasites, but neither have very many.

would anyone suggest me giving her some of tula's poop? tula's a greek tortoise, yana's a sulcata. i don't know if mixing their poop would be a good thing, just a thought.

i've got mazuri, they all love it. i only feed that on sundays, but i'll start feeding that every day with some finely chopped greens and grasses and see where that gets me!

thanks everyone for your help! advice on tula poop needed now!
 

Yvonne G

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In my OPINION, that would be a no-no. Just like mixing species, and I'm totally against that.
 

dmmj

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emysemys said:
In my OPINION, that would be a no-no. Just like mixing species, and I'm totally against that.
Are you against the different species poop? or poop in general?
 

Kristina

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I agree with Yvonne. Some of the healthy baby Sully's poop would be okay though.

I have also used and recommended poop for sick baby tortoises (and other animals. Baby rabbits often die from being bottlefed, because they don't get the healthy gut flora that they would get from their mother's milk. Putting a couple of healthy rabbit's droppings in the milk can help.)
 

moswen

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i did that with the baby rabbits i had this summer and they lived too! k, no to the tula poop, i'll try to keep mos's and safina's poop coming in, i just really don't think it will help if it hasn't yet. but, i mean, why not try!
 

Yvonne G

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dmmj said:
emysemys said:
In my OPINION, that would be a no-no. Just like mixing species, and I'm totally against that.
Are you against the different species poop? or poop in general?

Sorry...I should have quoted moswen's post so you knew what I was referring to. She asked if it would be ok to use the Greek's poop for a sulcata baby. That's the "no-no" I was referring to.
 

exoticsdr

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In bunnies, the babies eat cecotropes or "morning feces" from the mother to populate their guts with the normal bacteria required to process their food. As for the cross species supplementation...if given the choice of trying to save a life with feces from a known healthy tortoise of different species that comes from a similar natural environment and similar dietary requirements, you bet I would use them, IF there were none available from a known healthy member of the same species. That said, I bet there are tons of members on this forum willing to ship "fresssshhhhhh poop" cross country to help out another tortoise lover.
 

moswen

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lol, what a smell that would be! mos and yana both have a small amount of parasites though, i'll just start catching morning poos from their baths and adding it to yana's new diet.

you guys have been so great, what responses! thank you all so much!
 

Terry Allan Hall

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moswen said:
for those of you who don't know, ayana is my smallest sulcata hatchling. she's around a year old and 2 inches. she has no growth rings between her scutes. she may be partially blind, and she may have been bullied by mos in her old home. she has no parasites which i believe may be preventing her from being able to properly digest her food which is causing her to not get the nutrients she needs, thus causing the lack of growth... basically to possibly end in starvation, even though she's eating daily. now she's in her own container and she's doing a little better, believe it or not, i've been hand feeding her since it seems she has a hard time with finding her food.

she's been in there for a few days now. first day she hid all day and barely moved from the place i set her down. the next day she ate baby carrot food from a spoon i was holding for her. the next day she ate some cactus fruit and a small piece of kale that i also held for her. yesterday she wouldn't eat any of the greens even though i kept waving them infront of her face, and touching her nose with them, she just kept going around me. today i fed her some more cactus fruit which she gobbled up... all by herself! she didn't need me to hold it for her!

but yesterday is what upset me, she wouldn't eat the greens. normally, i would say "tough love" for a healthy tortoise, but yana hadn't eaten for a few weeks probably before i put her in her own pen. now, i don't know what's up with her other than my observations, but i don't believe cactus fruit sprinkled with vits and calcium is going to give her all she needs to become healthy again. i put bird vitamins in her water and in her morning soak, i also put a small amount of baby carrot food in her morning soaks as well. sometimes she drinks, sometimes she doesn't.

so, what should i do about her feeding regime? i know she's really delicate right now and i really am worried about starving her to get her to eat what she's given. i feel as though that will only make a bad situation worse, but i have absolutely no experience with sick tortoises. i barely have experience with healthy ones lol!!

any advice?

Try mazuri that not quite liquid (but very soft) mixed w/ cactus, enriched w/ calcium/vitamins and pureed to about the consistancy of pudding...I've saved very sick/emanciated baby tortoises with that "goop", but Ayana doesn't sound as far gone as that, so she'll likely be in pretty good shape pretty soon...a bit of HEALTHY sulcata poop is a very good idea, as well...never tried offering poop from another species, but I'm thinking that'd be a "last resort" scenario...

After a week or so, add chopped hay or grass, for roughage. Eventually, mix the goop w/ her normal food, eventually only feeding the goop 1 - 2X a week.

Good luck to both of you.
 

Len B

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Hey Rebekah, I could send you some of Walkers poop, he just ate a pumpkin and some say that pumpkin is good for getting rid of parasites. I would love to see the expression on the face of the postal worker when I told her it's tortoise poop in the box, Because I usually say it's cactus or some other type of plants, since that's all I ever send out at our small post office here at the beach. Len
 
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Maggie Cummings

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As for adding "a little bit of carrot baby food" to the water is wrong. Put her in a small container and add the whole jar of baby food.
I was thinking about yogurt to add to her gut flora. What do you think about that? I would try Mazuri and continue to feed cactus. What makes you think she doesn't see so well?
 

moswen

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ugh terry, i thought that was such an awesome idea that i just went and made it, plus some grassland pellets and a small cuttlebone chunk... you should really add:

"warning, smells like the worst day of your life, if the worst day of your life had a smell" to the end of wherever you suggest that concoction next! bc it smells AWFUL!!! lol, so awful infact, that yana's eating it! yay!!! thanks for the recipe idea.
 
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