Pretty Sure Its the End

[Andee]

Use oral syringes of course, I tend to use more higher water content and soft bodied feeders than I do exoskeleton feeders. And I do add some fattier feeders. I usually add about an eighth of an teaspoon for everyday I give multivitamins. Then of course do the farther back stuff. 1 cc/ml syringes are best, and don't feed more than .5 cc at once, usually you want to split it up into 4 feeds a day, so it will add up to about 2 cc fully.

 

[timw1]

I wish you and your cham all the luck BKO

 

[JacksJill]

I bet your vet can give you a feeding demo. if that is what she recommends. Keep us posted.

 

[BKO Overdrive]

Im sad to report when i got home last night Trig passed away. This afternoon we will bury him in the back yard. I want to say thank you for all that helped, maybe i should have tried the liquid diet sooner. Hopefully hes eating all the bugs he wants now in heaven. @JacksJill thanks for your recommendation. @Andee thank you for being so informative with the information you gave me, i have saved all that you said and plan to use it if im in need to again. Ill take action a lot sooner.

 

[BKO Overdrive]

Oh Also @Michelle Maxwell thank you for also trying to help me. I love this community, sadly i feel like i let everyone down by letting my little boy pass. IM going to be doing a necropsy to see what was the possible cause of death. Ill keep everyone posted

 

[Echo.27]

you said he was wild caught, correct? IM no expert on chameleons but I believe any animal is susceptible to depression when they are removed from their favorite place. If you can't find anything wrong with him, then that is what I believe, your cham had probably a very strong attachment to the wild and is now getting very homesick

 

[Echo.27]

Oh Also @Michelle Maxwell thank you for also trying to help me. I love this community, sadly i feel like i let everyone down by letting my little boy pass. IM going to be doing a necropsy to see what was the possible cause of death. Ill keep everyone posted

oh im so sorry for your loss

 

[BKO Overdrive]

you said he was wild caught, correct? IM no expert on chameleons but I believe any animal is susceptible to depression when they are removed from their favorite place. If you can't find anything wrong with him, then that is what I believe, your cham had probably a very strong attachment to the wild and is now getting very homesick

I would have never thought of that, thats very interesting. Ill see what the necropsy says

 

[JacksJill]

I'm so sorry to hear the sad news. Condolences.

 

[Michelle Maxwell]

Oh Also @Michelle Maxwell thank you for also trying to help me. I love this community, sadly i feel like i let everyone down by letting my little boy pass. IM going to be doing a necropsy to see what was the possible cause of death. Ill keep everyone posted

BKO Overdrive I'm so sorry to hear this hope the necropsy show what was going on I'll be waiting to hear from ya

All my condolences to you

 

[jajeanpierre]

Im sad to report when i got home last night Trig passed away. This afternoon we will bury him in the back yard. I want to say thank you for all that helped, maybe i should have tried the liquid diet sooner. Hopefully hes eating all the bugs he wants now in heaven. @JacksJill thanks for your recommendation. @Andee thank you for being so informative with the information you gave me, i have saved all that you said and plan to use it if im in need to again. Ill take action a lot sooner.

I'm very sorry for your loss. I didn't chime in earlier since you already had all the help you should need, people here but most importantly, a competent vet. You needed to take the advice given by a trained veterinarian who has seen the animal, not be distracted by us well meaning lay people.

You did not let anyone down, including your Trig.

Your Trig was most likely a wild caught with all the problems that go along with wild caughts. Virtually every wild caught has parasites that they keep in check. When stressed (at capture, on display at Petco, when stressed by inappropriate caging or hydration), their immune system is weakened and the parasite level can get out of hand.

Parasites should not kill a healthy chameleon with a healthy immune system, but a stint in a Petco cage will suppress any immune system and parasites can get the upper hand and overwhelm them. There may be complicating factors such as kidney disease from dehydration, which I'm sure happened to him at Petco. Your good care cannot undue that kidney damage.

Your vet was correct, that sometimes a fecal comes back negative when in fact the animal is loaded with parasites. My own zoo vet also recommended wax worms for one of my newly imported wild caughts that was failing to thrive.

I'm glad you are getting a necropsy. It will tell you a lot and probably show you that you did a good job with Trig. In hindsight, perhaps getting him to the vet earlier, a more aggressive approach and repeated fecals, maybe fresher ones, might have made a difference, but it might have made no difference at all. Aggressively treating any wild caught causes its own harm by stressing them.

I am a firm believer that a chameleon should be able to heal itself. I don't say that as being anti medical care, but as believing that if things are set up right for your chameleon, he will have a very robust immune system and keep himself healthy. An ill chameleon suggests all is not right in his world, but I want to tell you I think that all happened before you got him.

Someone mentioned the mental aspect of a chameleon becoming depressed in captivity. Having worked with so many wild caught chameleons, I have experienced that first hand. The one that first showed that to me was a young mellers chameleon I picked up from the importer's and held for a friend for a couple of weeks. I didn't have appropriate caging for her, but it was appropriate for my own wild-caught montane chameleons which were just a bit smaller than she was. But for her, those walls made her horribly depressed. She gave up and tried to die on me. I fought to get her to live and about 10 days into her stay with me she changed her mind and decided to live. I was never so glad to get an animal out of my house as the day she was picked up! I'm sure if I had kept her six months in the caging she was in, she would have gotten sick and died on me, just because she wasn't housed the way she needed to be even though it was wonderful housing for my graciliors.

The second animal that made me be more aware of the toll captivity takes on chameleons was a young wild caught gracilior. He was imported in May 2016 weighing about 22g. He immediately started dropping weight. I ran fecals and cleared up his parasite load. While being medicated, I force fed him silk worms (why not, his mouth is open and it won't stress him anymore than he already was and will at least get something in his gut) and I was able to stabilize his weight get his weight up from a low of 18g to about 20g. While I force fed him, he maintained his weight around 20/21g. As soon as I stopped, he dropped weight. I had him in to the vet many times with many fecals. The vet decided that the best course was to force feed him one of those critical care carnivore prescription diets. The vet was board certified in whatever a zoo vet is called by the AVM. He said that the critical care food would give him nutrition until the day he decided to live. Every day for four months I force fed him and he maintained his weight at about 21/22g while the others imported at the same time had doubled their weight. I waited for him to die. One day he just had a different feel to him and he started gaining weight. I dropped the force feedings to every other day and soon stopped. I haven't weighed him recently, but visually he has caught up with the others and is probably about 60g. (He was imported in May this year.)

I just wanted to share some of my experiences with wild caughts, which I think yours was. They are very tricky to deal with, even for experienced competent vets. Keep us posted about the necropsy results. It adds to the knowledge base.

 

[BKO Overdrive]

Okay I got the necropsy back, he had an inflamed stomach which was she thinks was causing him pain, being that he was in pain he did not eat, which in turn went to digestive problems, failure to absorb any nutrients and made him not want to eat period. She also confirmed he was 6-7 months old, and when i got him she said this has been in his system around the 2 month mark. His liver was fine and she noted that he was well hydrated, its just he couldnt absorb anything because of his stomach causing him issues. Thats all she told me. At least im at rest that it was not my care that caused it. Im a grown almost 30 year old man and loosing him brought me to tears because i feel like i failed him, ive raised my female vieled and even went through a round of healthy egg laying so i feel like that was a milestone for me, considering people do not recommend to have a female for there first. From what she told me he had this before i got him and it just got worse and worse, and told me that he wouldn't of even lived as long as he did if it was under someone elses care here locally. In the end as @jajeanpierre said. While everyone was super helpful and i followed everyone advice i should of brought the little guy sooner. But he will always be remembered. I scrubbed his cage down with bleach and soap and theres a local (non petco store) that has a baby male vieled. So we might grab him.

 

[jajeanpierre]

Okay I got the necropsy back, he had an inflamed stomach which was she thinks was causing him pain, being that he was in pain he did not eat, which in turn went to digestive problems, failure to absorb any nutrients and made him not want to eat period. She also confirmed he was 6-7 months old, and when i got him she said this has been in his system around the 2 month mark. His liver was fine and she noted that he was well hydrated, its just he couldnt absorb anything because of his stomach causing him issues. Thats all she told me. At least im at rest that it was not my care that caused it. Im a grown almost 30 year old man and loosing him brought me to tears because i feel like i failed him, ive raised my female vieled and even went through a round of healthy egg laying so i feel like that was a milestone for me, considering people do not recommend to have a female for there first. From what she told me he had this before i got him and it just got worse and worse, and told me that he wouldn't of even lived as long as he did if it was under someone elses care here locally. In the end as @jajeanpierre said. While everyone was super helpful and i followed everyone advice i should of brought the little guy sooner. But he will always be remembered. I scrubbed his cage down with bleach and soap and theres a local (non petco store) that has a baby male vieled. So we might grab him.

Please wait on the new chameleon as what happened to your guy might have been a disease process. I doubt your vet sent tissues to pathology (which isn't what you needed done anyway--it ends up costing about $350 or so). There might have been a parasite or disease she didn't see.

I want to also reassure you that had you taken him in earlier, the result might very well have been exactly the same. She would have had to find and diagnose whatever was going on with his gut. She wasn't able to with a dead animal after physically seeing where there was an abnormality. "Inflammed stomach" is an description not a diagnosis. She would have not only found the problem but found out WHY it was inflamed. She would not likely have been able to find the problem in the living animal. It is really hard to pinpoint where pain is pain is coming from. That is not a criticism of the competence of your vet, only to remind you that diagnosing ill chameleons is really really really hard. It is part luck and art and depends on the observational skills of the owner. Quite often it is the owner who tells the vet what is wrong and then the vet takes that information and knows where to look and what kind of problem she is likely looking for. Again, this is not a criticism of your vet or you. It is really hard to diagnose chameleons. I once took in a deathly ill animal to the vet and she commented on how good he looked. And she's a really good reptile vet! My ill chameleon perked up from the stress of the vet visit and didn't present as ill. I had to tell her what I was seeing and we got to the bottom of it. It's a team effort. The more skilled the owner, the more likely the vet is to get it right.

Again, I'm sorry for your loss. Please hold off and clean that cage again. It might have been parasites.

 

[SunflowerSupreme]

I wish you the best with your future endeavors, and I'm so sorry for your loss!!!

 

[DartFrogKeeper]

definitely not, you also can ditch the calcium with D3 if you use repashy. If it's the LoD formula which is the only thing I use anymore with all my reptiles, I use once to two times a week with my jackson.

Do you use calcium without D3 in addition to the LoD Repashy? Or just simply LoD a couple times per week.

I currently have Repashy Calcium Plus and Zoomed Repti Calcium without D3. I was thinking of using the zoomed each feeding and the Repashy every 2 weeks. I am now rethinking that and maybe I should just get some LoD and simply use that for a Male jacksons.

 

[Syreptyon]

Do you use calcium without D3 in addition to the LoD Repashy? Or just simply LoD a couple times per week.

I currently have Repashy Calcium Plus and Zoomed Repti Calcium without D3. I was thinking of using the zoomed each feeding and the Repashy every 2 weeks. I am now rethinking that and maybe I should just get some LoD and simply use that for a Male jacksons.

Hey there. You will receive more answers and better answers by starting your own thread. This one is over two years old and ended with the loss of a beloved animal. Best to make your own topic and not re-open old wounds