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It is common consensus that upper respiratory disease in the gopher tortoise is untreatable and once the tortoise shows symptoms it is doomed. I have found this to be untrue if you are willing to spend the time and effort required to treat them successfully. This is not to say that some will die despite your best efforts, especially if the disease has progressed, but the tortoise in this picture is very much a success story. While on a camping trip at a state park, on a cold January evening, my son found this guy sitting in an open field in near freezing temperature. It was to drop to 16 degrees that night and he would surely have frozen to death, so my son picked him up, wrapped him in a blanket and brought him to me. It was obvious that he had been in captivity because he would have been down his burrow in these cold temperatures. He had probably come out on a warm, sunny day to graze and someone had snatched him up. People do some really incredible things, so for whatever reason they must have brought him back and dumped him out in the cold, where he had obviously been the night before in the near freezing temperature.
It took over a day to slowly get him warmed up and moving around, but when he did, I immediately saw that he has mucous in his lungs and nostrils.. I gave him 2 cc of an antibiotic called Baytril and put him under a heat lamp placed about 2 feet above him. The injections can be given in the soft part on either side of the rear leg. It requires one person to hold him and one to give the shot. It’s important to note that they should be kept in surroundings large enough to allow him to move away from the heat if he wants to. That, for me was an upstairs bathroom with a blanket on the floor. Cold blooded creatures, when given antibiotics, should be kept in about 85 degree surroundings for the medication to do it’s job. It’s also important to place a vaporizer in the room to keep the humidity very high, thus helping to break up the mucous. Sick and injured animals are always dehydrated. Gopher Tortoises seldom drink since they get their moisture from the food they eat in the wild. Every day I placed him in a shallow container filled with about three inches of WARM water and left him under the warmth of his light for about 15 to 20 minutes. (To my knowledge they will never drink from a bowl.) Almost every time he would put his head under the water and drink. Even when he did not, he was still absorbing moisture through his skin. Without rehydration, the large doses of antibiotics would probably have damaged his kidneys.
The antibiotics should be given daily for about a week, or until he shows signs of improvement, then cut them back to every other day and the amount to 1cc. Continue to give him the antibiotic for at least a week after all the symptoms have disappeared and continue to check him closely for signs that it is returning.
There’s nothing to lose by overdosing him on antibiotics because without them he will surely die. You can also discontinue the vaporizer when his breathing is normal and there’s no mucous coming from his nostrils.
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This tortoise is a success
story, having been treated for URD, he has fully recovered and
will be released in a few weeks.
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Winter is definitely not a good time to rehabilitate a gopher tortoise, even in Florida, unless you know where his burrow is and can return him to it, which almost never happens. As of this writing, it is now March with some sunny warm days, followed by cloudy cold days, so on the nice warm days I carry him out to my fenced in garden where he can eat grass and soak up the sun. (I also turn on the garden hose near him so that he can drink if he wants to, which he often
does.) On the cold days he stays in the bathroom in a small Dogloo with his heat lamp. Even in the hot summer months they should be kept isolated from other tortoises long after symptoms have disappeared to be sure that he no longer is contagious to other tortoises.
Release should only be done when you are sure he is fully recovered and the weather is going to stay warm. In Florida that is usually April. Find a good gopher tortoise habitat that you’re sure is not going to be bulldozed for construction. (In Florida that is not easy). They require high, dry pine and palmetto habitat and plenty of grassy plants to feed on. If the area is a good place for tortoises you will probably find other tortoise burrows telling you that you’ve found the right place. Parks, even though it’s protected land is not a good place to release, because there are just too many people who can’t resist picking them up and taking them home for a while, which is probably what happened to this one. Total time invested, about three and one half months, but the satisfaction one gets from success is well worth it.
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