Nigel Tries to Walk Again

I had to take him out of his tank today to give him his pain meds and to give him some appetite booster & water. I figured I'd give him a chance to try to walk. He only  hesitated for a few moments before he started to walk. It's a short video because my phone ran out of memory.

At least for the first week, Nigel is staying with me. I've got lots of experience giving shots & force feeding so I'm better equipped to take care of him right now. Plus my vet's office is just up the road so I can take him back for his wound checks easier.

Nigel's Surgery

My first rescue, Nigel, came to me with a massive arm infection and, over the past year, we've tried our best to get it healthy again. Multiple surgeries, multiple courses of antibiotics.

It didn't work. The infection came back with a vengeance.

Today, Kaitlund, Nigel's owner, along with my amazing vet, Dr Folland, decided the best course of action at this point was to remove Nigel's arm.

So his arm was amputated in surgery today.

It makes me very sad, though I am super hopeful he'll have a better quality of life now.

Pain meds for one week, vet recheck in a week, antibiotics for two weeks, stitches out in 6 weeks. He'll stay with me for now in his sick tank-- for at least the first 24 hours, a 20 gln tank with a heating pad. Once he gets a bit more active, I'll move him back into a regular tank.

Now we just wait and see.

A Note about Housing Beardies

When beardies are little (under 4 to 6 months old), they do really well together. The increase in competition for food triggers their "survival aggression" and they are far more active. You do have to be careful because hungry babies will eat anything-- including the toes & fingers & tails of their siblings!

Once hormones start to flow through beardie veins, they lose the ability to be with their siblings and need to be housed by themselves. Males, especially, are far too territorial to share a space with any other beardie. Older beardies will injure or kill each other-- even if they are related.

So babies are okay together, juveniles & adults are NOT.


Just wanted to clarify that for you.

Color Babies Update

The babies have entered the "Cute Black Hole of Eating" stage. They can't seem to get enough to eat. A couple days ago, Pink ate so much that she ended up throwing it all up. Ay yi yi. Purple is working on his 2nd shed since I got him and is about 9 grams. Pink & Yellow haven't shed yet and are still only about 6 grams. Once they shed, I'll know they are growing enough to adopt out. 

I'm still trying to decide how to best place them for adoption. I have 10-gallon tanks I can use and just create their own setups to sell... not sure how involved I want to get with their supplies. They are fine together now that they are little, but will do better being separate when they get to be "sub-adults" (over 6 months). 

All three of the babies have really cool tiger striping and pretty colors. They are always sitting on each other now, trying to tell the other ones that they are boss.

L to R: Purple, Yellow, & Pink

This is what a very sick Beardie looks like

I took Spike to the vet. The infection from two old bite wounds spread into his jaw bone and into the rest of his body. He has two tonsil-like masses in his throat that are so swollen with infection that they are making it harder for him to breathe. We started him on antibiotic injections immediately. If that doesn't work, then my vets may surgically remove the abscesses. Hopefully all of this will be enough to save his life. :(

Just one more reason male beardies should NOT be put together when they are adults. If they grow up together and are related, that is one thing. If they are not-- DO NOT PUT THEM TOGETHER.

Feeling heartsick over this.

Update on Spike

I discovered yesterday that Spike has two infections in his beard from old injuries and so I did an "I&D" procedure-- incision & dissection to remove the pus. His beard looks dreadful. I'm hoping to treat his wounds locally with a topical antibiotic so I won't have to take him back to the vet to get antibiotic shots. We'll know in a week. Until then, I have to clean out the wounds in his beard twice a day, remove the pus, and pack the wounds with cream. He hates it. I don't blame him. 

I had to squeeze out Spike's wounds tonight and then pack them again with cream. He hated it! Poor guy! So I kept him wrapped in his towel and put him on a heated up corn bag so he'd be nice & warm & wrapped up. He's much happier now.

Update on the 3 Color Babies

The 3 babies are now the 3 Amigos! They eat like pigs. I don't have to hand feed them anymore. I figure I will give them a week or two more and then find homes for them.

Substrates-- what I use and why I recommend it

There is a lot of online info about what substrate to put in your beardie tank and there are quite a few options: calcium based sand, crushed walnut shells, paper towels, newspapers, slate, etc. At the beginning of the year, my reptile vet (Dr Scott Echols) told me to get single strand astroturf from Home Depot to use. BEST decision I ever made-- too bad he didn't tell me two weeks before when I spent over $40 buying sand for beardie tanks....

Freshly changed astroturf-- look how clean!

So here's what I do. I keep only 40 gallon tanks (36 inches long by 18 inches wide) and I have (or try to) TWO pieces of astroturf per tank. When the beardies poop, I grab a tissue, pick up the poop, and flush it. After a week, I take my stack of clean astroturf mats and swap out the old ones for the new ones. The new ones go outside where I sun-bleach them and hose them down. Once they drip dry (and get a second sun bleaching), I roll them up and stick them in my supplies box until next time.

My dirty pieces before I hose them down

When I adopt out a beardie with a tank, I always send two pieces of astroturf. My Home Depot sells two sizes of astroturf: 12 ft and 6 ft. I stick with the 6 ft. There are two choices in the 6 ft: one with a black, more flexible back and one with a white, hard back. I always buy the black back. If you want to be creative you can buy green astroturf, blue astroturf, or tan astroturf. I always stick with green (I'm boring that way).

On Monday I bought 3 pieces of 18 inch astroturf which will cut down to 6 pieces to use. It cost me $11.80 total with tax or just under $2 per tank. You can't buy any other substrate that cheaply!

I even use it in my tortoise tanks to make clean up easier. My next astroturf purchase will be a 48 inch piece that I cut into 4 pieces to use in my two 4 ft long tortoise tanks.

Baby Weary

I continue to feed the three remaining babies twice a day. Some days they'll eat a roach on their own, some days they don't. My sense of paranoia with them is strong. Every little thing they do makes me scrutinize them: are they sickly? are they dying? are they gaining weight? what if they aren't eating? is that one moving?

There was a small sense of relief after the two babies died for not having to wake up and check for breathing. But I'm doing the same thing with the others. Purple is the only baby that I'm sure will be okay; he even ate a piece of zucchini yesterday! Pink & Yellow have good days, when I think they'll survive, and bad days, when I think they're slowing down.

It's a heart-wrenching process. I didn't realize how draining the two babies' deaths were. I sat on my porch swing with my sister-in-law Anne and cried for a few minutes. I couldn't even watch my husband bury them in the herb garden near the others.

I wish they were totally "out of the woods" and healthy so I could breathe a little. But they are still all 5 grams. They do appear to be getting longer, but not heavier. So I'm trying different foods. Yesterday they got some zucchini shreds. Today I fed them some baby food mixed with calcium & vitamins-- they actually ate it off the spoon instead of me squishing it down their throats. I'd love to see them eating more on their own.

So I keep on plugging on, doing my best, and trying to keep my chin up.

On another note, Volcano was adopted out! Yeah! Spike is doing better! Yeah! We're down to only 9 beardies. 4 of my own, 3 babies, 1 Spike, and 1 beardie we're boarding till January.

Brothers: Blue & Green

With the advice of my vet, we put Green & Blue to sleep tonight. They were both doing very poorly and were struggling to breathe. I watched them all day to see if there was any improvement, but they continued to deteriorate. Green started having full body seizures every time I touched him.

I agonized over it and finally decided it was time. :(  They are buried in the herb garden with the other babies that came from the same parents in an earlier clutch.

Color Babies Update

All 5 babies are still alive. All 5 ate twice today and pooped and slept and moved around. Even Baby Blue. I'm surprised by their resilience. Stubborn little buggers.

I won't give up on any of them until they draw their last breath. At this point, I'm sure that Purple, Yellow, and Pink will be fine. Yellow was the only one to eat a roach yesterday and today. Even Green is doing great. And Baby Blue is just hanging in there still. :)

Color Babies Update

Baby Blue is still hanging in there. Poor little guy barely holds his head up any more. :(

His belly is sorta sunk in even though I'm still feeding him twice a day. Most of the time he props himself up onto something so his head is higher than his body. He doesn't seem to have the ability to thrive, but yet, he doesn't seem to want to die.

Green is doing great! He's up and moving all the time. Yellow, Pink, and Purple are super active too now.

Purple has always been the healthiest baby-- that's why he got the color Purple because it's my daughter's favorite color and she didn't want to give it to a sickly baby that would just die. Purple has started eating on his own and is shedding! It's SO cute when the tiny ones shed! I have no doubt this guy will live & be healthy.

I thought I zoomed out enough with this pic to get Yellow in it too. He was on the branch just out of the top of the picture. I don't normally feed them till 9:30 or 10 am so they have plenty of time to warm up and become active. I wouldn't want someone shoving a plastic tube of mush down my throat first thing in the morning! ;)

From L to R: Blue, Green, Pink, Purple

The Babies Outside

The Color Babies, rescues 26 through 30

Since these 5 little baby beardies came last week, my life has not been calm or easy. They require continual care and it's been a struggle to feed them. Until yesterday, I fed them by using the end of a toothpick to drop formula onto their mouths.

Yesterday, I got serious though. Thanks to my amazing vet, Dr Doug Folland at Parrish Creek Vet in Centerville, Utah, I got supplies that have made feeding time MUCH easier.

LaFeber's Emergency Exotic Carnivore diet and a 1 cc/mL syringe with part of a cat catheter on the end. The new syringe fits perfectly in their mouths and I can feed them a tenth of a cc twice a day. No more drops on toothpicks! Hooray!

So here's the babies:

Pink
He's only 4 grams, but has always been one of the more active ones.

Yellow
He's only 3 grams and has done really well lately.

Green
He's only 3 grams and has always been one of the sicklier ones. Dr Folland discovered some sort of lump in his belly yesterday. I'm hoping he'll pass it on his own and not end up having a serious problem with impaction.

Blue
He's the other sickly one. In fact, I didn't think he'd make it past last Friday. But he's still alive & kicking. He weighs between 3 and 4 grams.

Purple

He's my most active baby and weighs 4 to 5 grams. 

They are now getting all the nutrition and care they need to survive. It's up to them to put forth some effort to live. I sure hope they make it!