White pattern showing up on plastron??

[marginatedtort]

Hi all,

We have a marginated hatchling (owned him for about two months now) and I noticed these small white patterns on his plastron today. Is this normal? He may just slowly be shedding as he grows but as a new owner I’m anxious about things like shell rot- should I be concerned?? What do you think it is??

Thanks for any advice

 

[Beasty_Artemis]

Probably just new visible growth appearing. I have seen that exact thing on my baby redfoots. Yep just new shell growth.

 

[Krista S]

Hi all,

We have a marginated hatchling (owned him for about two months now) and I noticed these small white patterns on his plastron today. Is this normal? He may just slowly be shedding as he grows but as a new owner I’m anxious about things like shell rot- should I be concerned?? What do you think it is??

Thanks for any adviceView attachment 329322

The marks you’re seeing are 100% normal and expected. I bet if you look close at the carapace you’ll see some there too. One of the most experienced members on the forum here taught me (when I had the same concern) that she believes it to be calcium working its way through new keratin. We can’t say for certain if that’s true, but it seems to make sense since these marks are usually only visible in young, growing torts. The marks can appear as squiggles, circles or anything in between. If you do a search on the forum for “squiggles” or “white squiggles” you’ll see endless examples of this. Now that my tortoise is reaching more full grown size, the white squiggles and circle marks have become less and less.

I’d love to see a full picture of you cute little tortoise. Marginated babies are so cute!!

If you haven’t already seen it, here is a link to the most up to date care sheet for your little one.

The Best Way To Raise Any Temperate Species Of Tortoise

I chose the title of this care sheet very carefully. Are there other ways to raise babies and care for adults? Yes. Yes there are, but those ways are not as good. What follows is the BEST way, according to 30 years of research and experimentation with hundreds of babies of many species. What is...

tortoiseforum.org

Welcome to the forum!

 

[KarenSoCal]

Here's the post about the squiggly lines.

Thread 'Whats happened to my shell ?! (white squiggly lines)' https://www.tortoiseforum.org/threads/whats-happened-to-my-shell-white-squiggly-lines.78210/

 

[Krista S]

Here's the post about the squiggly lines.

Thread 'Whats happened to my shell ?! (white squiggly lines)' https://www.tortoiseforum.org/threads/whats-happened-to-my-shell-white-squiggly-lines.78210/

Yup! That’s one of countless threads about it. You could spend hours reading about it on TFO and seeing others pictures. ?

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