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67517
Got this from a vet friend, thought y'all might find it useful...
Generally speaking, if you only have a crack or hole in the shell with no
major laxity in the pieces, in other words, the fracture is stable, then
it is by far, best to leave it heal as an open wound. I can't stress this
enough. Turtle shells heal very nicely on their own if kept clean, free
of debris, and away from flies. You can actually make things worse by
repairing a shell. If the area is not cleaned well enough, you may "lock"
bacteria inside the wound and the turtle will die from infection. This
may not happen for many months and possibly for up to a year or more, in which
case, most people have released the turtle by that time and felt they did
a pretty good job of repair. Meanwhile, the turtle does well for awhile
until the infection spreads.
Open wounds heal very well. Simply flush the area with copious amounts of
sterile saline, or nolvasan, or betadine. I generally do this for several
days until I'm sure there is no more debris in the wound then I apply
nolvasan cream to the area which acts as a bandage and keeps most
everything else out. I usually remove this cream once every week or so, flush with
betadine, then reapply the cream. Shells heal very slowly, so don't
expect much for a couple of months or so. If the area healing is smooth, pink
and looks like you fingernail, then you have healthy tissue. Be sure to keep
them away from flies that could lay eggs in the wound. If you keep the
wound clean, flies don't generally like that.
If you have a fractured shell that is very loose and needs stabilization,
most people use either epoxy or methyl methacrylate as the hardening agent
and a nylon mesh or wire for strength. Proceed by cleaning the shell and
flushing the wound as above. Apply your epoxy in "bridges" and do not
completely cover any wound. Covering up the wound invites problems in the
future (bacterial growth under the repair). There is a description of
this technique in the ARAV journal, issue?. Antibiotics are used only if the
wound is contaminated or the animal appears ill. An infected wound
usually oozes a blackish liquid. Use baytril 5mg/kg once daily for 7-10 days oral
or injected. Maintain good hygiene.........do not put them in a place
where they can submerge themselves or in an excessively dusty environment such
as with alfalfa pellets substrate. Maintain an ambient temp. or 75-85 for
most healing turtles. Do not release a healing turtle in fall, they won't heal
if the temp. drops.
Once again, I stress that turtle shells have a remarkable ability to heal
even without epoxy. I once saw a gopher tortoise at U of FL that had 25%
of its shell completely missing from above the left rear leg. It had healed
completely with only nolvasan flushes every few days and oral antibiotics.
I also had a box turtle that had been injured by a bulldozer. The shell
had a 2 inch crater on the dorsal surface that extended 1 inch down into the
lung tissue. I simply flushed the area with sterile saline and applied
nolvasan cream as I described above (no antibiotics). It was completely
healed in 2 months.
[addsig]
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