Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Chip had the acrylic removed yesterday & I was awestruck when I saw the progress he's made. He's not healed yet but where the plastron was broken apart - not broken off, it has grown back together.
The vet also scraped off any necrotic bits of shell and left him looking pink and kind of scary but what she wants him to do is soak daily in chlorhexidine for a week, then she's going to go back & do more acrylic work.
While she was doing this we were discussing the fact that the 1st Mader book stated acrylic or epoxy should be used on broken shells but the new Mader book suggests using wire sutures & not an acrylic covering it.
Well, we both thought the same thing- what to use to repair is something that should be decided on a case by case basis.
Acrylic has worked for him & the way he was broken if she'd used wire it would've taken a long long time to put him back together & then there's still no guarantee that infection wouldn't have set in. So acrylic it is for him for now.
Here's how he looked while she was working on him:

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PHRatz

Wow! Looking much less like a doughnut(big hole in it), and more like a box turtle. He must be quite an old guy...the healing seems to be taking such a long time. You are very patient with your patient. You should post that old photo I just looked at in your album. He's in almost the same position.

One thing is very clear...he's looking much more beefy. I bet he's strong! Nice job Ratz!

>>Wow! Looking much less like a doughnut(big hole in it), and more like a box turtle. He must be quite an old guy...the healing seems to be taking such a long time. You are very patient with your patient. You should post that old photo I just looked at in your album. He's in almost the same position.
>>
>>One thing is very clear...he's looking much more beefy. I bet he's strong! Nice job Ratz!

Thanks Ken
I told DH yesterday that this weekend I want to go outside-back on the porch & take a photo of Chip exactly the way we took the photo last year. We'll have to wait until tomorrow so we can do this in daylight. Once we do that I'll post both the photos together.
I'm kind of wondering if Chip really is old or young.. he's quite a bit smaller than Hobo & Hobo looks like an older boy to me but ya know there's really no way to tell for sure.
The vet did say last year when she first treated Chip that she believed it would take at least 3 years for him to fully heal, Shell E took 2 years but she wasn't hurt any where near as bad as Chip was.
When I saw the healing that's taken place in just one year, I was thrilled!
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PHRatz

Wow! Three years!! The photo must not really do justice to how bad it was. Around here, most of the shell damage that I see is from lawn mowers and dogs. These usually heal fairly fast. Cars are typically an all or nothing event for me...either the turtle is just superficially clipped, or totally destroyed.

I've been meaning to ask, but I keep forgetting. Did you see any Desert box turtles in NM?

Wow! What improvement! They are truly amazingly when they heal up. But it takes the right kind of keeper who can help them! Good work. You are so fortunate to have such a great vet to help you.

>>Wow! What improvement! They are truly amazingly when they heal up. But it takes the right kind of keeper who can help them! Good work. You are so fortunate to have such a great vet to help you.

Thanks so much!
My vet, oh my gosh I thank my lucky stars every day that she actually moved here. I have never met a vet so interested in reptiles or exotics in general who has such a drive to learn as much as she can about them.
Yesterday before she worked on Chip she lasered an abscess that came up on one of my rat's faces. Antibiotics haven't cleared it up so she used the laser & this morning the rat was feeling so much better that again I was in awe.

I am so happy I have found this vet, we have such a great working relationship now.. I can take anything to her & she'll fix it.
In June I picked up a Mexican ground squirrel with a head wound from being hit by a car on the road where the speed limit is 25mph because it's on the college campus.. took him to my vet, she fixed him & released him back to the wild. I don't know any other vet around here who would do that.
I am not in love with her I just love her! LOL
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PHRatz

I have only good things to say! In the photo is a pic of my Spurred tortoise Benny. When his shell was crushed in by a large female, his lungs were visible, but no punctures to his organs ~ I used Hydrogen Peroxide and Marine epoxy by GOOP to repair him. No anti-biotics.
I mounted the Tortoise on a jar so he was immobile.
I then used q-tips and H. peroxide to clean loose debri that entered the cavity.
With Hemostats, I gently pried the crushed in shell, back outwards and sealed the entire broken seam with this epoxy. Within two hours (after the epoxy had hardened), he was placed back outdoors (seperate from the larger specimens.)
The photo below is one year later after I removed much of the epoxy. You can clearly see where new laminae (scutes) have regrown beneath the old ones and new bone where the broken seams were above his back legs.
The area missing above his back leg was destroyed when the incident occured.
Turtles and Tortoises have a remarkable healing ability, especially when left to roam outdoors in the natural sunlight. Its not unusual to find Turtles and Tortoises in nature with missing limbs and fully healed after severe shell damage.
Thanks, Leo

Skin & Scales

I'll tell ya, my sulcata had been shot with a gun when we took her in. Her bullet holes have been covered by epoxy in the beginning, acrylic today. She had one area where her plastron was cracking away but the herp vet I use now who wasn't the one who treated her in the beginning.. used a dremmel & acrylic to repair that particular crack & in 1 year's time it healed 100 percent. You can now see a seam where it had been cracked.

Each time her shell is worked on which is about once a year, there's a very visible amount of healing when the old acrylic is taken off.
So far we've had no bad luck covering shell wounds with acrylic but then with Shell E who was wired back together we had no problems. It apparently just depends on how they're injured which method is best to use.
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PHRatz