Work experience with exotics

Last summer I was so privileged to be able to see practice with an exotics vet. I have to say that it was a truly amazing experience and has really got me thinking about going into exotics after university.

I spent 2 weeks at this practice and some of the things I saw will stay with me forever. 

A notable case was a tortoise that came in who hadn't been eating, the type of questions the vet asked to this statement were, how do you keep the tortoise?, do you hibernate it?, what foods do you feed it?. I found that with many exotics the main thing to change when they are ill is the husbandry aspect of their care. Well this tortoise (male) had an x-ray to see if there was anything obstructing his intestines or stomach. What the x-ray showed was that this tortoise was not male he was in fact female and had been for all 40 years of her life. The reason she wasn't eating was due to the fact that she had about 12 large follicles within her abdomen. This was compressing her stomach making her not want to eat. I also learnt that this can become very dangerous due to the fact that tortoises don't have a diaphragm and their lungs sit at the top of their shell,this then means that anything abnormal in the abdominal area can compress the lungs and prevent the tortoise from breathing, which could result in death. After hearing this explanation I didn't fully understand why the follicles were forming and why they weren't just laid as eggs. So after asking a fee questions I found out that, because tortoises aren't native to the UK the temperature isn't right for them to lay eggs. However if there is a rise in temperature in the UK these follicles will start to be produced within the tortoise, but they will only be laid if the temperature stays consistently high for a long time. So therefore many tortoises in the UK can have this problem.

I learnt a lot from this case and I really  look forward to sharing with you next week some more interesting and day to day cases that I've come across