Cherry Head Tortoise Health Problems

Question
Hi there

We recently bought a Cherry Head tortoise, just over 1 year old. upon examination we found he had an extreme pale tongue almost on the verge of white, he walks around with his eyes shut and his eyes have to be bathed to open them, also today after 3 days of having him noticed a split in the middle region of his plastron, which is very soft to touch. He seems to be getting slower as the days go by, no food, we are helping him to drink with vitamins and antibiotics from a vet, but the vets do not seem to know anything about reptiles.

from this, is there anything you can identify or recommend we do? we are extremely concerned for this little guys health.

Big thankyou

Andy

Answer
Hi Andy,

want to touch on a couple of things here, you want to make sure that the vet understands that the plastron needs to be supported or braced this can be done with two tongue depressers placed down the middle of the turtles plastron so that the center hinge or crease is between the two depessers, this can be secured by gauze type tape so that it can be reomoved for cleaning, also make sure the vet is giving a systemic antibiotic, as well as an appitite stimulant (b12)now, zoo meds makes a couple of good ones that also include vitimans and minerals that will help boost the imune sytem.the other thing is make sure the vet checked for any openess to the plastron injury as it will let maggots in as well as bacteria,so double check that there are no maggots in the wound. with dilagent care and cleaning a lot of turtles will survive this injury ,

i hope this helps you. please do keep me posted and let me know if you have any questions ,also if you can take a digital pic of the injury and e-mail it to me at xmstuff@optonline.net that would be greatly appreciated.

                 thanks for the question ,

                             tommy