No crocodile tears for blind crocs

The NSPCA reported that a team of national farm animal protection unit inspectors had attended to a crocodile farm in All Days, Limpopo where they identified problems with crocodiles being blind. The NSPCA said that the water management of the farm was also of concern so the inspectors issued a notice and the sick crocodiles were removed from the healthy herd.

Lotter offered his theory on what the cause of the blindness was. “Crocodiles rarely ever get sick but when they are young they can pick up a lot of parasites,” he said. “I believe the cause of the blindness is chlamydia.” Lotter explained that the illness in crocodiles is similar to the human disease which is sexually transmitted however crocodiles can easily pick up the disease from being in contact or swimming in the same water as a diseased crocodile.

“When you farm with crocs you don’t want to bring in wild crocs or even crocs from other farms because they could be carrying diseases like this,” he said. “You have to put outside crocs in quarantine otherwise you will put your crocs at risk.”

Lotter explained that once a crocodile has chlamydia they need to be caught individually and their eyes have to be cleaned with antibiotics otherwise they will go blind.

On the NSPCA Facebook page a user commented, “Oh my word what next? How could the owners not notice that the poor crocs are blind?”

“It’s not easy to tell if a crocodile is blind because they can go two to three months without eating but if they are in a hothouse they should be regularly eating and moving around,” Lotter explained. “If they aren’t then there’s a possibility that the croc is blind.”

Lotter added that even when a crocodile farm is close to a water source like a river, the water that the crocodiles swim in needs to be filtered and purified as there could parasites and diseases within the water.