adambeck
Hatchling Member
Hello from Hiroshima, Japan! My name is Adam and my family has a female bearded dragon that was born in April so she's now about 6 months old. Her name is Fifa (because my 12-year-old son loves soccer/football).
Fifa may be smiling in this picture, but in fact, she's concealing a deep, troubling secret: she has an eating disorder. She won't eat on her own, and hasn't for the past 3 months or so. (Remember, she's only 6 months old.)
We got Fifa from a reptile shop in the city, when she was only a few weeks old, but we let them continue to care for her until she was a bit bigger, about 6 weeks old. In the meantime, we did our best to create a suitable home for her. This is what it looks like now.
A few notes:
*The temperatures in the tank are generally fine, though this is a year-round challenge in Japan because there is no central air and heating, which means we must continuously make adjustments to keep these temperatures at suitable levels as the temperature in the room rises and falls with the seasons. (At the above right of the terrarium, for example, is a panel heater for mild warmth at night, as the nights are now getting chillier.)
*The basking light is a 75W "Intense Basking Spot" made by ExoTerra.
*The UVB light is a T5 HO 5.0 UVB tube. I tried to get a 10.0 UVB tube, to replace the 5.0 tube that came with the Reptisun Terrarium Hood, but the 10.0 tubes I received--in two attempts--were both defective (they wouldn't fit properly in the hood). It was very frustrating and time-consuming (it's hard to get these supplies in Japan!), so at that point I did some research and learned that the 5.0 tube would be adequate if I placed it inside the tank at an appropriate height.
To continue the tale...
When we first brought Fifa home, she was eating on her own just fine. In fact, she was fine for a month or so...but then her own motivation to eat began to decline. Some days we could get her to eat, some days we couldn't. The problem was becoming very preoccupying, very stressful. She would die if we couldn't get her eating regularly again!
After a few weeks of this, we brought her to the vet and he diagnosed her (from a fecal sample) with coccidiosis. So we started giving her medicine and, week by week, with continuing visits to the vet, she apparently has recovered. (During this treatment, we were giving her a daily squirt of Bene-Bac Plus gel, too.)
Throughout this illness, she still wouldn’t eat so we started force-feeding her daily: live dubias, frozen (thawed) crickets, and some greens. (We’re also dusting regularly with calcium and vitamins.) This "force-feeding" actually requires little force because, strangely, as soon as you gently tug open her mouth and put something past her lips, she’ll start eating it right away. She just won’t eat it by herself!
Now, at 6 months, she’s about 185 grams and seems reasonably healthy. However, the eating problem persists and the vet and the owner of the reptile shop haven't been able to help us resolve it.
One theory is that we have basically "conditioned" her, from a young age, to only accept food through force-feeding. This may have been necessary at the time, when she was smaller and had coccidiosis, but now, of course, she should be eating on her own again.
This past Monday we put her next to a bowl with a few dubias in it and, to our shock, she actually ate one! Just one, but it was the first time she had eaten a dubia by herself in months!
So I thought, okay, let's try *not* force-feeding her for a few days and see what happens. If she gets hungry enough, maybe she'll eventually eat something on her own. And for the next four days we regularly gave her opportunities to eat...but she ate only two small pieces of banana off my finger one morning.
On the fifth day (yesterday) we gave up--she was losing weight pretty rapidly and this strategy didn’t seem be working. Of course, when we then force-fed her, she ate everything right up without any resistance!
So what do we do with this sweet but exasperating creature? Assuming this is no longer a physical problem, but something psychological or emotional, how can we get her to start eating on her own again, as she did when we first brought her home? Of course, she's still young so we hesitate to *not* feed her anything for too long, as this could perhaps harm her, but what other tactics could we try?
I think therapy would actually do her some good, but I doubt she would share anything with the therapist because she's completely silent at home. She gives us various looks and glares, but won't say anything, not even when I plead with her to talk to us about her feelings.
Okay, I better stop here. It’s beginning to sound like *I'm* the one that needs therapy.
Thank you for considering our case, and for offering some suggestions that might help get Fifa eating on her own again.
Best wishes to you all! And many thanks for this forum--it has been a great source of useful information and encouragement!
Fifa may be smiling in this picture, but in fact, she's concealing a deep, troubling secret: she has an eating disorder. She won't eat on her own, and hasn't for the past 3 months or so. (Remember, she's only 6 months old.)
We got Fifa from a reptile shop in the city, when she was only a few weeks old, but we let them continue to care for her until she was a bit bigger, about 6 weeks old. In the meantime, we did our best to create a suitable home for her. This is what it looks like now.
A few notes:
*The temperatures in the tank are generally fine, though this is a year-round challenge in Japan because there is no central air and heating, which means we must continuously make adjustments to keep these temperatures at suitable levels as the temperature in the room rises and falls with the seasons. (At the above right of the terrarium, for example, is a panel heater for mild warmth at night, as the nights are now getting chillier.)
*The basking light is a 75W "Intense Basking Spot" made by ExoTerra.
*The UVB light is a T5 HO 5.0 UVB tube. I tried to get a 10.0 UVB tube, to replace the 5.0 tube that came with the Reptisun Terrarium Hood, but the 10.0 tubes I received--in two attempts--were both defective (they wouldn't fit properly in the hood). It was very frustrating and time-consuming (it's hard to get these supplies in Japan!), so at that point I did some research and learned that the 5.0 tube would be adequate if I placed it inside the tank at an appropriate height.
To continue the tale...
When we first brought Fifa home, she was eating on her own just fine. In fact, she was fine for a month or so...but then her own motivation to eat began to decline. Some days we could get her to eat, some days we couldn't. The problem was becoming very preoccupying, very stressful. She would die if we couldn't get her eating regularly again!
After a few weeks of this, we brought her to the vet and he diagnosed her (from a fecal sample) with coccidiosis. So we started giving her medicine and, week by week, with continuing visits to the vet, she apparently has recovered. (During this treatment, we were giving her a daily squirt of Bene-Bac Plus gel, too.)
Throughout this illness, she still wouldn’t eat so we started force-feeding her daily: live dubias, frozen (thawed) crickets, and some greens. (We’re also dusting regularly with calcium and vitamins.) This "force-feeding" actually requires little force because, strangely, as soon as you gently tug open her mouth and put something past her lips, she’ll start eating it right away. She just won’t eat it by herself!
Now, at 6 months, she’s about 185 grams and seems reasonably healthy. However, the eating problem persists and the vet and the owner of the reptile shop haven't been able to help us resolve it.
One theory is that we have basically "conditioned" her, from a young age, to only accept food through force-feeding. This may have been necessary at the time, when she was smaller and had coccidiosis, but now, of course, she should be eating on her own again.
This past Monday we put her next to a bowl with a few dubias in it and, to our shock, she actually ate one! Just one, but it was the first time she had eaten a dubia by herself in months!
So I thought, okay, let's try *not* force-feeding her for a few days and see what happens. If she gets hungry enough, maybe she'll eventually eat something on her own. And for the next four days we regularly gave her opportunities to eat...but she ate only two small pieces of banana off my finger one morning.
On the fifth day (yesterday) we gave up--she was losing weight pretty rapidly and this strategy didn’t seem be working. Of course, when we then force-fed her, she ate everything right up without any resistance!
So what do we do with this sweet but exasperating creature? Assuming this is no longer a physical problem, but something psychological or emotional, how can we get her to start eating on her own again, as she did when we first brought her home? Of course, she's still young so we hesitate to *not* feed her anything for too long, as this could perhaps harm her, but what other tactics could we try?
I think therapy would actually do her some good, but I doubt she would share anything with the therapist because she's completely silent at home. She gives us various looks and glares, but won't say anything, not even when I plead with her to talk to us about her feelings.
Okay, I better stop here. It’s beginning to sound like *I'm* the one that needs therapy.
Thank you for considering our case, and for offering some suggestions that might help get Fifa eating on her own again.
Best wishes to you all! And many thanks for this forum--it has been a great source of useful information and encouragement!