Disease Protocol

EFFECTIVE DISEASE PREVENTION PROTOCOL FOR LARGE TORTOISE COLONIES

When keeping large colonies of tortoises in captivity its absolutely imperative to have disease prevention protocols in place in order to prevent any potential serious problems from arising. Its also imperative to have well-thought-out systems and rules in place to deal with such problems if they do occur.

In this article I’ll try to explain the best methods I adopted based upon many years of running a very large tortoise breeding facility here in the UK.

The Perfectly Healthy Tortoise

The first thing to understand about keeping groups of tortoises is that there is absolutely no such thing as a “perfectly healthy” animal. Although it could be true that you’ve had some tortoises in your care for the last twenty or so years which have never been ill, nor ever needed a trip to the vets, it doesn’t mean that they are completely “clean”!!

All tortoises, as with all life-forms on Earth, can harbour potential pathogens. Whether any potential threats actually turn into real-life problems depends on an infinite number of permutations, both biological and environmental.
And although we can’t control some inevitable biological factors, we can certainly play a very critical roll where environmental influences are concerned.

When I bred tortoises commercially (before retiring from the industry some ten years or so ago) I strived for “tortoise perfection”. Through careful procedures I had set in place we managed an illness rate of less than 0.5% and a death rate of approximately 0.2%.   Compare that with typical industry mortality rates of sometimes 50 to 75% in commercially farmed chelonians.

When I look back now I realise how incredibly good we were at managing our livestock, and yet if I lost just one tortoise from a batch of 1000 hatchlings I’d lose sleep worrying that we weren’t doing our job properly. It took many years and lots of reassurance from our specialist tortoise vet Stuart McArthur B Vet Med MRCVS to realise that we are not God and therefore cannot control every single life which we created on the farm
Stuart used to tell me almost weekly that there is “no such thing as a clean tortoise and that I shouldn’t expect 100% success 100% of the time.”  The message eventually stuck one day when he asked me if I were totally healthy and totally “clean”, when I answered yes, he said have you ever had a cold sore? Then, when I answered yes, he exclaimed “so you’re a herpes virus carrier then”.
I then realised he was absolutely right; there is no such thing as a completely “clean” animal.
And with our ridiculously low mortality rate we were actually doing extremely well with our care and management, extremely well indeed.

So, remember that YOUR tortoises are not “clean” either, and if you are careless and sloppy with your disease management protocol you are running the risk of having a disease time bomb on your hands, as its stress associated with sloppy care which causes most diseases to occur in the first place.

Rule1. Keeping Species Separate

As reptile hobbyists we usually like to keep various species within our care. In fact I know lots of people whose back gardens, sheds and outbuildings have started to resemble mini-zoos. And this is fine when everything is happy, healthy and under control.

However, the more differing species you keep the more stringent your hygiene levels needs to be. Tortoises from one geographical location will harbour germs which tortoises from another part of the World will not have any immunity against.

During times of early exploration Western European white men would try to interact with far-flung tribes deep in the jungle, the likes of which had never seen any other form of civilisation. The consequences were sometimes horrendous. With a single cough or sneeze entire races were virtually wiped out, as they had no defence against our “modern germs”.
Its the same with reptiles. You cannot expect a Brazilian Redfoot Tortoise to have the same biological make-up as a Horsfield from Kazakhstan. 

Therefore mixing species together is absolutely not recommended.
Each species should have its own completely separate enclosure.

Rule 2. Remember The Numbers

When keeping tortoises together in a pen its just as critical to have the right number of occupants as it is to have only the same species together.
Whilst working closely with Stuart McArthur and taking his very valuable chelonian veterinary experience in, together with my many years of captive accomodatory experience, we came to the conclusion that “numbers” were extremely important in reducing disease risk.

In particular we noticed that if a group of individually healthy tortoises were placed together they would typically remain healthy until such time the group consisted of more than eight animals.
For some reason tortoise immune systems couldn’t cope with nine or more occupants and time after time Stuart would see poor health resulting from peoples’ captive collections of 9+.
I adopted the policy of having eights in our pens, whether adults or babies, eight was always the magic number.
With regards to adults the ratio of 3 to 1 in favour of females to males was also critical in reducing stress, and therefore preventing possible disease.

Therefore the following numbers should be remembered and used to form a “maximum” healthy group in a single pen or enclosure:

1                          Single Species.
3 2 1   (3 to 1)   females to males
8                          maximum occupancy

Rule 3. Dip Trays, Gloves And Disinfection

Okay, so we’ve touched upon keeping species separately and keeping numbers to eight or less, but that advice would be completely useless unless you follow the next few guidelines absolutely rigidly!

As you now know, the idea of keeping species separately is not to allow cross contamination to occur through the passing of germs from one to another. But if you are handling occupants with your bare hands from pen to pen, then you may as well be keeping all of the tortoises mixed together as you’ll be indirectly transferring the germs anyway!

And its the same with your feet!
There’s no point keeping separate pens if you are going to trample from pen to pen wearing the same footwear.

So, what can you do to eliminate these risks? The answer is to follow rules.....

Rule 3A) Wear disposable latex gloves when touching animals in one pen, then throw them away in the dust bin.  Wear a new set of disposable gloves before touching the next pen, and so on.

Rule 3B) Either wear new disposable footwear covers for each pen, and then throw them away between pens. Or install plastic dip trays of strong disinfectant on the entrance to each pen, allowing a standing period of 5 minutes before entering each pen.
If adopting the dip tray method, a strong virocidal disinfectant such as Virkon should be used.

Rule 3C) Use entirely separate feeding utensils, water trays, bathing trays, etc, for each pen.
And disinfect thoroughly after each use. Use new disposable gloves for touching each pen’s utensils.

Rule 4. Fogging

In enclosed areas such as greenhouses and sheds I would recommend fogging the area once a week.
Commercial fogging machines are available these days for relatively little expense and are a fantastic tool in the fight against disease outbreak.
The foggers can be filled with a mixture of water and an animal-friendly virucide at the manufacturers’ recommended dosage.  The machine then vaporises the mixture and bellows out a fine fog which will find its way into every single nook and cranny which would otherwise be impossible by normal cleaning methods. The virucide is strong enough to kill all the usual tortoise-harmful pathogens such as bacterial problems and viruses like herpes, iridovirus, etc, but is pet-friendly so you can leave the tortoises in situ whilst the fogging takes place.

  

Rule 5. Isolation Pen

Its important to have an indoor isolation pen set-up and ready at all times. This should be in a completely separate location to the rest of your pens. The further away, the better.
It should be constructed of a wipe-clean material, and contain no substrate apart from newspaper which can be easily picked up and disposed of.
It should have access to heat lamps and ambient heat from background radiators.
It should be large enough to be divided into several singular enclosures to house several individuals.
The area should contain its own supply of disposable gloves, disinfectant, dust bin, feeding and bathing utensils, etc.

Rule 6. Specialist Vets

Seek out a specialist tortoise vet BEFORE anything happens.
There aren’t many tortoise-specialist vets within the UK so its important to know where your nearest one is.  Start a relationship with the vets practice so they know all about you and your animals. Make sure you know their opening hours, telephone numbers, out of hours procedures.
Write everything down, laminate it, and keep it in your isolation room.

Rule 7. Don’t Ever Think That It Won’t Happen To You!

You may think that the above 6 rules are a little over the top, especially wearing gloves and so forth. And you may think your animals will all be okay regardless of whether you put procedures in place or not.... well, you may be lucky.... or you may not!
Believe me disease can spread like a wildfire amongst captive reptiles if you don’t follow the protocol.  I’ve witnessed firsthand how illness has swept through people’s entire stock, with 100% mortality rates. Its happened to several breeders I know. Luckily it never happened to me, but thats not through chance, its through following protocol.

When you suspect something is wrong:

Even with the very strictest methods in place sometimes problems still do occur. Its therefore imperative to have a pre-thought out plan for if the occasion should happen.

Firstly if you suspect an animal might be poorly, speed is terribly important.... get it removed from the rest of its cohabitants straight away and put the animal in the isolation unit.
Ensure nothing it touches, or anything you touch, has any possibility of being transferred to the other group members. So be extra careful with latex gloves, disinfectants, and the like. This should include paying extra attention to door handles and clothing etc. 
Get a specialist vet involved straight away.
Do not reintroduce the animal back with the others until the specific pathogen has been identified, and deemed to be non contagious.  Even then I would want at least three months to make sure the illness doesn’t return, before reintroduction.