Brodybreaux25
Chameleon Enthusiast
Did you vet offer the option of having them surgically removed?
MBD and/or egg bound?
- Thread starter IowaJim
- Start date
He did mention surgery but said he didn’t have the expertise to do it (and he is the only reptile vet in town). He thought there was a slim chance that I could find someone in the city about 2 hrs away from us but he wasn’t sure she could survive the combined stress of such a long car ride and surgery. That’s why we decided to start with the oxytocin shot. Now that it has been another week of her trying on her own and she is even weaker, I think her prospects of surviving the surgery would be pretty grim. This sounds cold but at this point, it seems like if I am going to spend a chunk of money on her with surgery, I should instead direct that money towards upgrading my viv and getting my husbandry right so if/when I try again, I will be better prepared.
Brodybreaux25
Chameleon Enthusiast
This has been going on for a few days now, may be time to consider ending her suffering.
Without being too harsh, this didn't happen due to a lack of funds, it happened because of a lack of knowledge. If you do decide to get back in come here first for a husbandry review before bringing a new Cham home. We have many members willing to help you.
Brody,
That's not too harsh to say and I think you have the right to say it since you've been by my side helping through this whole process (which I have greatly appreciated). Just to be clear, it wasn't my intent to say that it was a lack of funds, more of an attempt to state that it didn't seem like the right thing to "throw good money after bad" (recognizing that sounds VERY cold).
As an update, I brought her out of her tunnel on Sunday with the intent to end her suffering. She was, however, still strong and moving a lot so I couldn't bring myself to do it. I got on the phone this morning and called vets in the surrounding areas. I found a vet about 90 minutes north of here that has done surgery on chameleons before and was willing to do Penelope and the price he quoted me was very reasonable so I decided I should give it a shot. We have an appointment for Wednesday morning. I'm going to force feed her this evening and tomorrow to get some food/nutrients in her before the surgery so she goes into it still strong. I'll keep you updated.
Brody, in prep for her return home, would you do me a favor and look back at my original post and let me know if there are any changes I should be making? I have installed the new UV light (t5-HO) that you recommended and I have multi-vit and calcium on-hand so I will do calcium every morning and then alternate weeks with a dose of D3 and multi-vit. Anything else I should be doing?
Thanks!
Brodybreaux25
Chameleon Enthusiast
Way to step up! Yes, I’d love to do that for you this evening!
Brodybreaux25
Chameleon Enthusiast
I know some of this was covered at different points in your thread but I’m still going to recap them...
Please post pics of all the equipment you bought.
Handling- to me chams are not pets, they are a hobby. Most chams want zero contact with you. Of course there are exceptions, all handling should be on her terms. If she willingly walks onto your hand, go for it. If not, respect her decision.
Supplements- seems like you understand what you need to do with these now.
No-D3 calcium every feeding
D3 twice a month
MV twice a month
Please post pics of what you have.
I think you should change your misting schedule to 1 min every 4hrs.
Poop- thank you for that thought, you have ruined milk chocolate for me for the rest of my life!(no changes)
The acrylic box has to go, ESPECIALLY the fountain. Eventually it will kill your Cham and may have played a role here.
UVB- zero uvb passes through glass. While it does provide her a bit of visual stimulation it’s useless for UVB. Please post pics of the linear uvb you bought.
Temps- you’ve got to provide the proper temps for her or it will slowly chip away at her health.
Kids- kids should never be allowed to hold chams especially for hours at a time. They are just too jerky and unpredictable. I’m sure this was a huge stress for her.
Measuring humidity is also critical, invest in a quality hydrometer, not a cheap one. $20 will get a quality one.
Back to the fountain, they are biological time bombs and have no place in a chams viv, ever!
Placement- for a Cham height = security. Having her at ground level put a lot of undue stress on her. Her viv should be put as high as possible in your living room.
Please post pics of all the equipment you bought.
Handling- to me chams are not pets, they are a hobby. Most chams want zero contact with you. Of course there are exceptions, all handling should be on her terms. If she willingly walks onto your hand, go for it. If not, respect her decision.
Supplements- seems like you understand what you need to do with these now.
No-D3 calcium every feeding
D3 twice a month
MV twice a month
Please post pics of what you have.
I think you should change your misting schedule to 1 min every 4hrs.
Poop- thank you for that thought, you have ruined milk chocolate for me for the rest of my life!(no changes)
The acrylic box has to go, ESPECIALLY the fountain. Eventually it will kill your Cham and may have played a role here.
UVB- zero uvb passes through glass. While it does provide her a bit of visual stimulation it’s useless for UVB. Please post pics of the linear uvb you bought.
Temps- you’ve got to provide the proper temps for her or it will slowly chip away at her health.
Kids- kids should never be allowed to hold chams especially for hours at a time. They are just too jerky and unpredictable. I’m sure this was a huge stress for her.
Measuring humidity is also critical, invest in a quality hydrometer, not a cheap one. $20 will get a quality one.
Back to the fountain, they are biological time bombs and have no place in a chams viv, ever!
Placement- for a Cham height = security. Having her at ground level put a lot of undue stress on her. Her viv should be put as high as possible in your living room.
Brody,
Pictures of the supplements are below. I noticed when taking the photo of the multi-vit that it includes D-3. I know I shouldn't overdo it with the D3 so I am assuming I should just do the multi-vit with D3 bi-weekly and skip the D3 Calcium entirely.
I also bought a UVB lamp based on that UVB bulb sheet you sent me previously (it came with the 5.0 bulb so I have that installed now):
I'll pull the fountain and then I am going to use the acrylic box as the frame for my permanent lay bin so she can just climb down in lay in her cage rather than having to wait for her clueless owner to notice the signs that she is ready to lay. I can then just rig up a privacy curtain when she is down there so she feels safe.
I've got a hydrometer on the way from Amazon. Should be here next week.
Regarding handling, before she got sick, we were rarely handling her. The regular handling I described in my post was my misguided attempt to help keep her body temp up and foster digestion processes because she wouldn't leave the bottom of the cage and bask in her lamps up high. Also, "kids" was maybe the wrong word to use for my progeny, they are older "kids" so it is now more of a case of jerky attitude/behavior rather than jerky movements...
I'll adjust the mister too. Does anyone have any recommendations on how they throttle the pressure back on their mister? The spray coming out of the nozzles on my mister is strong enough that it has a tendency to spray all the way across the cage and out the back side of the netting onto my floor.
On my way to pick her up from the Vet. I'll update this evening.
Brodybreaux25
Chameleon Enthusiast
Brodybreaux25
Chameleon Enthusiast
?
Rst_Cham
Chameleon Enthusiast
Hello, any update on your girl?
All,
Sorry to go silent and leaving you waiting on the edge of your seat. On the road all day yesterday for work combined with frustration with my local vet has slowed this post. I picked up Penelope from the out-of-town Vet (Dr. Williams) on Wednesday afternoon. No surgery. Williams did an x-ray and an ultrasound before surgery and there weren't any eggs! Just a pile-up of undigested food. Said her bloating was sitting way to high for it to be eggs and that the x-ray and the ultrasound totally confirmed it. Diagnosed a vitamin D deficiency due to lack of UVB light.
So apparently my local "reptile" vet didn't know what he was looking at. Or, to give him the benefit of the doubt, I had expressed my worries about egg-bound when I went to see him so when he looked at the x-ray, he suffered from confirmation bias and saw "eggs".
Long story short, she wasn't ever egg bound. But, I need to get her vit-D levels up; the new UVb recommended by Brody is going to help and I have been taking her outside to sun herself for about an hour a day for the last two days when I get home from work. Luckily it is finally warm enough here that she can be outside. I also did a force feed of D3 last night and I'll do another one on Monday (I want to catch her up a little without over doing it. Going to drop back to once every 2 weeks after the Monday dose).
I think she is looking better already with the vit-D "loading" but it could also be me wearing rose colored glasses.
Sorry to go silent and leaving you waiting on the edge of your seat. On the road all day yesterday for work combined with frustration with my local vet has slowed this post. I picked up Penelope from the out-of-town Vet (Dr. Williams) on Wednesday afternoon. No surgery. Williams did an x-ray and an ultrasound before surgery and there weren't any eggs! Just a pile-up of undigested food. Said her bloating was sitting way to high for it to be eggs and that the x-ray and the ultrasound totally confirmed it. Diagnosed a vitamin D deficiency due to lack of UVB light.
So apparently my local "reptile" vet didn't know what he was looking at. Or, to give him the benefit of the doubt, I had expressed my worries about egg-bound when I went to see him so when he looked at the x-ray, he suffered from confirmation bias and saw "eggs".
Long story short, she wasn't ever egg bound. But, I need to get her vit-D levels up; the new UVb recommended by Brody is going to help and I have been taking her outside to sun herself for about an hour a day for the last two days when I get home from work. Luckily it is finally warm enough here that she can be outside. I also did a force feed of D3 last night and I'll do another one on Monday (I want to catch her up a little without over doing it. Going to drop back to once every 2 weeks after the Monday dose).
I think she is looking better already with the vit-D "loading" but it could also be me wearing rose colored glasses.
Brodybreaux25
Chameleon Enthusiast
.... I hope they are right but this doesn’t add up for me. Why would she have backed into the tunnel and stayed there for so long if it wasn’t eggs?
I’ve been thinking a lot about that too. To the point that I took her lay bin and softer through all of the sand/soil to see if she tried to trick me and got the eggs out before the surgery but I didn’t find anything (and didn’t really expect to).
After continued thought, here’s why I believe she exhibited the laying behavior after the visit to the vet. Because that first vet thought She was egg bound, we thought she needed help getting them out so we gave her a shot of oxytocin. My theory is that the oxytocin made her body believe she was carrying eggs because she now had that hormone in her body. The oxytocin triggered the laying behavior and she backed into my test tunnel and the processes wndednthere because no number of contractions was going to get out eggs that didn’t exist. Once she was down in that tunnel, she was too weak/exhausted from contractions to pull herself out so she stayed in the tunnel and I thought she was still trying.
Could be a crazy theory but that’s what I’ve got for now.
Mawtyplant
Chameleon Enthusiast
@salty dog Read this part that OP told us
THE FIRST VET DID A VERY BAD JUDGEMENT and we all thought the female had eggs..the forcefeeding might just cause all the undigested food in her...The first Vet should took the Xray examine in a proper way..so no eggs n this is an odd situation that we all learned ...thats all.
Brodybreaux25
Chameleon Enthusiast
..... and a bit of reading before posting could have prevented your last two ignorant posts!
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