Neonate Birth Defects

[MeruJack]

I wasn't sure which forum to put this under: Breeding or Health Clinic. You may have already read about the 8 little surprises my Werner's chameleon presented me with one week ago: 8 babies. They were surprises because I hadn't known that she was gravid as she wouldn't have anything to do with my male since she came to me 5 months ago. Now I know it was because she was already pregnant. Today I moved each baby into its own enclosure and was able to take a good look at each tiny, tiny neonate. I had noticed shortly after I first discovered them the day they were born, that some of them were missing an eye. Today, I took a tally. Four of them have two normal looking eyes and four of them are missing their LEFT eye. I am wondering if anyone else has experienced something like this, and I am wondering if something stressful (such as being captured and shipped from Africa to America) happened to the mother during a crucial time in the neonates' development and could possibly explain how half of them could be missing a left eye. I am wondering if they will be able to hunt well enough to grow into otherwise healthy adults or if I can expect them to survive only a short time. And I am wondering if more than just their one eye was impacted or if their brain was impacted as well. Anyone with similar experiences or knowledge of such occurrences, or any ideas, thoughts, or answers please reply. Thanks!

 

[Eric Adrignola]

I had an entire clutch of veileds hatch with eye deformities - it was as if the skin around the eyes did not fully "zip up" around the pupil, leaving a part of the eye unprotected by skin. The skin around the eyeball took on a "pacman" shape instead of a donut shape, with the pupil in the middle.

Every one, every eye. I think it had something to do with temperature fluctuations during incubation, but I can't remember details. I was depressed back then.

A missing eye is strange. Is it closed up or actually missing the eye entirely? I would not be surprised if it was something that happened to the female during the process.

 

[MeruJack]

It's just flat where the eye is supposed to be. It's odd that all four of them are missing the LEFT eye. I do think it has to do with something that happen to the mom early in the pregnancy. I don't know if extreme stress could cause something of this magnitude…??? I have more questions than answers at this point.

 

[MeruJack]

Here is one of the babies with a missing eye. This picture was taken at night with a flashlight. I was doing a head count, saw this little one sleeping and decided to snap its picture. They're so active during the day, it's hard to snap a close up that isn't blurry. Its head doesn't look as misshaped as some of the others'. Their heads look a bit lopsided because it is flat or indented a bit on the left side where the eye is missing.

 

[GCash]

Yes! The first litter my WC had was heavily affected. The eye/eyes problem you mentioned plus an eye with a tiny tiny skin aperture, missing toes(one foot had a single toe on one side and two on the other for a total of three on one foot) and dome-heads. Out of the eight, five died quickly after birth then two more followed leaving the only one who had no visible deformities and she's still going strong and is as beautiful and healthy as one could ask for. That same female has had a second retained litter since then consisting of three babies of which one was weak and passed but the other two are very healthy. With the higher ratio of healthy to compromised young in the second litter(even though it is a small sample size) I'm led to believe it is nutritional, stress or temp. related during import like others have said. There was multiple unfertilized ova in both litters which makes me think they were from retained sperm and the only other possibility I had thought of was that the sperm viability could have deteriorated during storage but I would think that if that was the case, my second litter would have been worse off than the first.

In my case, all the ones with birth defects naturally culled themselves. I wish you the best of luck with yours.

 

[junglefries]

I have noticed the live bearers do have a lot of birth defect litters, as opposed to egg clutches. I know high temps can lead to issues, with both, almost every time. With the live bearers, I was convinced that stress played a HUGE role in those affected. Especially, females brought home that were gravid. They almost always had something wrong with their babies, as opposed to getting pregnant in my care. Those usually turned out to have very healthy babies.

 

[Dooley1]

Carl Cattau had werneri and some were missing eyes at birth similar to your babies.

One of them is now a sub-adult living with Cheryl Garcia (little leaf on the forum) and she posted a nice pic of it on Facebook yesterday.