Hi every1, my daughter got a horsefield tort for xmas and its turning my hair grey with worry. His poo and wee is so different from day to day. He gets a bath every day mostly or every other day coz he wont drink water in his tort table. Coz he does his business in the bath or on the paper when he gets out its easy to have a good check. When he wees in the water we where worried because of the white urates in it, they turned pinkish but then went back to white. His poo is sometimes quite smelly and ranges from quite fibrous which disolves in the water to like a mayonaise consistency when on paper, always loads of poo but wont poo in the tort table. Would worms be easily recognisable, we always have a look through. He just had his bath tonight and his wee urates where yellowish and looked stickyish. Hes eating as normal and quite active, mainly having bags of mediteranean salad/ winter salad mix. We recently got dried dandelion and a dried flower mix which he has had a bit of. Am i just being a worried mother or is there somethink wrong?

Hi and
The urates are soft so that is a good sign to say that he is well hydrated. His poo could be loose due to the salad mix as it is not fibrous. I have managed to find dandelion leaves and mallow, so they are around at the moment. Have a look at this site for help in what is available for the torts to eat this month
http://www.thetortoisetable.org.uk/site/tortoise_home_1.asp
Can you I ask just a few questions?
Where did you buy him from?
What set-up, lighting & heating do you have?
Thanks
Jane

Hi Jane, thanks for replying. We got Stevie from warrington pets and exotics and he lives in an open top tort table. We use a repti glo uva light which is on from 9am till 9pm and a 100 watt red basking bulb which we permenantly leave on. Temp in the coolest part of the table is just below 70 and this is where he sleeps all night, if hes not up by 11am I normally move him to the hotter end of the table which is just over 90. We think the yellow colour he experienced last time was due to the flower mix we had given him which we had got from the shelledwarrior shop. Have also bought some grow your own weeds as I dont want to pick any out the garden yet as in previous years iv sprayed them with weed killer to eliminate them from the garden.

Joanne