Another post about Sand

If you've read this blog, you've ready *many* posts about the dangers of sand. I'm not going to get in to that. You can click the "Sand" label at the bottom of this post and it will take you to other posts where I rant about how bad sand is. For this post, I want to focus on the aesthetics of sand.

One- sand makes your beardie dirty & stained. Look at the difference between Noel's belly after being on a solid substrate and being on sand. The sand side of the picture shows when his belly started to shed. The solid substrate side shows how clean his leg is until it reaches the old skin that hasn't shed off yet.

Gross, huh?

Two, sand & the even-worse walnut shell STINKS! Hand me a beardie and let me smell him and I can tell you right away if he's on sand or on a solid surface. Sand beardies smell SOOOO BAD! It's hard to keep the sand clean and bug/parasite free and it breeds stinkiness.

So get your beardie on a solid surface (tile, slate, laminate, shelf liner, paper towels) than for no other reason than you want him/her to be prettier and smell better. Their guts & digestion will thank you too.

Daenerys, rescue number 61

This week was one of those weeks when I needed two of me to get everything done. On Wednesday alone, I had three rescues: two beardies & one iguana. I didn't have time to get the second beardie and so I sent my friend K to go pick her up and take care of her.

We could tell from the ad that she was super skinny and had never had a UVB light.

Danny is a very skittish, very skinny, very sweet little beardie. She's been eating a ton and pooping out sand. I hate sand. She's in a great tank set up now and getting plenty of love and good food to eat.

I was grateful to get her out of her situation and into a better one even if I was too busy taking care of other rescues to do it myself. :)

Ozzie, rescue number 60

I found this beardie on our local classifieds. The ad said "Healthy Bearded Dragon" but the pics showed a tank filled with nasty sand, old food, parts of dehydrated meal worms, and other dirty things. I could tell right away that he was NOT healthy.

I picked him up today and quickly found that he *was* in bad shape. He has the most impacted femoral pores I have ever, ever seen.

I soaked Ozzie for 30 minutes before trying to gently (but firmly) squeeze all the plugs out of his pores. It took awhile and he hated it. I don't blame him.

I got his tank cleaned out and set back up to put him into after his "procedure."

This is how his pores look tonight:

I will have to keep working at the glands behind each pore. Normal & healthy ones are about the width of a piece of rice. His are pea-sized. Until I can clean them all out, he'll continue to have problems. So once a day, I'll soak him and massage more junk out of his pores.

I noticed tonight too that Ozzie's nostrils are swollen. I'm guessing they are filled with sand. I'll have to figure out how to get those cleaned out. And his eyes are getting more "frog-eyed" looking. Yep, sand again. I'll flush those out tomorrow too.

For now, sweet Ozzie is wrapped in a brand new blankie and tucked into my shirt where he is happily sleeping. He's had a hard enough day. I'll leave him there for now.

More updates later.

One More Reason Why I HATE Sand -- Drako, rescue number 37

I woke up early this morning in anticipation of a sickly beardie being dropped off at 6 am. I had talked to his owner last night about Drako, and we decided that her husband would bring him to me if he was still alive this morning.

Drako in the bath last night

9 year old Drako spent the last few years of his life in a tank filled with sand and no UVB light. He was given to his current owner and slowly started to fail, growing skinnier and more lethargic. Finally last night, he passed a large blood clot.

This morning, he was breathing shallowly and his owner's husband brought him to me on his way to work. I put Drako in a sick tank to warm him up while I got a saline injection ready for him.

But I was too late. When I picked him up, I noticed blood on the paper towels in the tank and blood coming out of his vent. All I could do was wrap him in a clean washcloth and hold him gently.

I HATE SAND!

I've read the bags of calci-sand and repti-sand and I know the "experts" claim that sand is great for beardies, but I've seen too many die because of it. A beardie on sand will eventually swallow the sand and not all of it will pass through them. All it takes is a few grains of sand stuck in their bellies to start catching bits of digested food. Over time those bits of food and sand snowball into a bigger and impassable clump.

Drako's intestines were filled with clumps of sand and partially digested food and because of the clumps, he felt "full" so he stopped eating. Eventually, his body attempted to pass the clumps and when he did, the clumps ruptured his insides. He passed a blood clot last night and then continued bleeding internally.

Draco this morning 

Internal ruptures are not repairable. A small tear can sometimes be survivable, but in a dehydrated, emaciated 9 year old beardie even a small tear would have been catastrophic. And it was.

Drako is still barely alive. Because he's not willing to quit, I'm not willing to quit on him. I did give him a saline injection and now all that I can do is wait. He's in a nice warm tank, on soft, clean towels. His breathing is slow and steady, but he is largely unresponsive. I expect he will pass away, but until he actually does, I'm going to keep loving him and keeping him comfortable.

UPDATE-- 

Draco has now died. I held him in my arms as he gasped his last. Here is a picture of his vent with the blood coming out of it. His legs are discolored and his pores are enlarged-- all caused by being stuck on sand for years with improper lighting and heating.