Why did my beardy die?(please help I have 4 more)

I just want to know if there was something I could have done for her to help prevent my other dragons from suffering the same fate.

First, I have now have 3 females and one male beardy. My fourth female(Jaws) died this afternoon. ALL DRAGONS ARE HOUSE ALONE. The most important part of this forum is that I figure out if she has anything that could be or has been transmitted to my other dragons.

Setup:
- insulated wood terrarium with glass front panel.
UVB: Reptisun 10.0 tube (replaced in March) Is in cage/ nothing blocking it. Within manufactures range to the floor (I believe it around 12 inches?)
Basking: 100w zoomed (basking spot usually get to about 95-100)
- coolside 80-85
- overhead ceramic heater that turns on if it drops below 65 at night
Substrate: Tile
Furniture: sling in back corner, ramp, and a branch
We use calcium powder on all food (rep-cal) & the rep cal multivitamin (once a week)

Diet: Dubias (dubias bred at home, colony started from Dubia Delly), wax worms, super worms, horn worms, mustard green, and assorted fruits.

Jaws was born in July 2013 and came from Blood Bank Dragons
--Weights--
December: 674 (thought she was gonna lay another clutch!)
April 16- 604
May 13- 585
May 29: 563 (this is a healthy weight for her)
July 15: 475 * stopped eating in June

--eggs--- (first clutch, never laid a 2nd she usually lays a second in July or August)
June 8: laid 1 egg
June 11: laid eggs
*was bread last year and had NO issues easy 2 clutches laid no issues, was NOT bread this year but laid infertile clutches like she does every year

Jaws was very over weight so she was being fed more greens and a few dubia a week. She rarely ate the greens and held out for her bugs.She was good eater, stopped eating before she laid eggs and then resumed after she laid them.

But after she laid her eggs in June she did not want to eat like normal. She was passing stool so impaction was not on my radar. This week she appeared very bloated (with air, she floated in her bath.) It did feel like she had something are in upper right quadrant, just below her chest bone. But I couldn't palpate any eggs. She was eating Horn worms and few wax worms but had no interest in other food.

I was feeding her abou 3-6 ML of critical care every other day for the last week. I did not want to put the full recommended dose in her with how bloated she felt. But she has pooped everyday when she is soaked. She had a good/average sized stool on the 15th. After this good poop I thought she headed in the right direction but instead she took a turn for the worst.

- she has not been lethargic except for the last 24 (ish) hrs
- very boney as expected without eating (spine, hips, and indents in head)
- has had normal stools, just small as she was not eating much (no blood or anything)
- seemed strong, was responsive and alert before the 16th

Jaws was always the best eater and healthiest of my dragons she never had to be on critical care because she stopped eating she is usually a bottomless pit.

She had a dark beard the last few days and today had a full black beard and hardly moved. I knew when I saw her this morning that we were there.I didn't not think she would make it through the day. I picked her up this afternoon and held her as she took her last few breaths. My mother thought she was breathing but I couldn't hear a heart beat with my stethoscope (its a nice one I'm training to be a vet teach and I can hear the other dragons hearts)

Adneo is on my radar as a possible cause ( all my beardies are being tested for it), BBD is known to have it in there colonies. I wanted to take her to the vet but when I saw the stat she was in the last 48 hrs I knew it was too late and that she deserved to die in peace at home in my arms.

- Jaws 2013-2017 -

Hi there, I'm so sorry to read this about. That pic of Jaws just put a lump in my throat, what ha sweet picture of a beautiful girl. No one can really say what it was, a necropsy could provide some answers. You've already mentioned ADV....it could also have been liver or kidney problems, possibly an infection from a burst egg....too many things to guess.

Good that you will have your other dragons tested for ADV, at least you'll know ewhat to watch out for if any of them become ill.

So sorry you lost your girl.

AHBD":2mzqrow3 said:

Hi there, I'm so sorry to read this about. That pic of Jaws just put a lump in my throat, what ha sweet picture of a beautiful girl. No one can really say what it was, a necropsy could provide some answers. You've already mentioned ADV....it could also have been liver or kidney problems, possibly an infection from a burst egg....too many things to guess.

Good that you will have your other dragons tested for ADV, at least you'll know ewhat to watch out for if any of them become ill.

So sorry you lost your girl.

Click to expand...

If any of them have ADV , they probably all have it unless you have kept them apart and never allowed them to come together ever.
If any have ADV it's not good allowing them to mate and produce clutches of hatchlings as all the hatchlings will have ADV (you can guarantee it).

My recommendation is have the surviving bearded dragons all tested by a vet for the same pathogen that likely took your girl. And take it from there.

If you don't have F10sc on hand, probably a very good investment , as are F10 HANDWIPES and a 1L F10 Spraybottle. This stuff is extremely good and will help kill off any pathogens on surfaces and hands when you handle the others.

kingofnobbys":3q9uvx3s said:

AHBD":3q9uvx3s said:

Hi there, I'm so sorry to read this about. That pic of Jaws just put a lump in my throat, what ha sweet picture of a beautiful girl. No one can really say what it was, a necropsy could provide some answers. You've already mentioned ADV....it could also have been liver or kidney problems, possibly an infection from a burst egg....too many things to guess.

Good that you will have your other dragons tested for ADV, at least you'll know ewhat to watch out for if any of them become ill.

So sorry you lost your girl.

Click to expand...

If any of them have ADV , they probably all have it unless you have kept them apart and never allowed them to come together ever.
If any have ADV it's not good allowing them to mate and produce clutches of hatchlings as all the hatchlings will have ADV (you can guarantee it).

My recommendation is have the surviving bearded dragons all tested by a vet for the same pathogen that likely took your girl. And take it from there.

If you don't have F10sc on hand, probably a very good investment , as are F10 HANDWIPES and a 1L F10 Spraybottle. This stuff is extremely good and will help kill off any pathogens on surfaces and hands when you handle the others.

Click to expand...

Will defiantly get that disenifectant! Thank you!

We have the swabs and have been trying to get samples from them all. We had already planned on testing all of them. I asked the exotic vet we see about it but I'm not sure she knows about it since she mostly sees birds.

I hope more reaserch is done for ADV, and it sucks that big breeders don't care that they have it. I assumed I was buying healthy dragons since all I hear is good things about the breeders I got them from. I would not have bred my dragons if I knew they had ADV.

Unfortunately the females were all shipped together in the same bag so there was no opportunity to keep them from giving it to one another.

I'm sorry you lost your girl, that's an awful thing to go through. I'm kind of surprised to hear that about BBD, I have always heard wonderful things about them and have seen a lot of their dragons which are all gorgeous. Not that I have any personal experience with them at all, I guess I just always hope that the bigger, very well-known breeders like them do everything above-board and really care about the well-being of their animals as their #1 priority. And yes, that's me being naive.

You absolutely should get the rest of your dragons tested, if for nothing else than to rule out Adenovirus. But honestly, and I really hope I'm correct on this one, it sounds to me like she had some kind of egg-binding/ruptured egg/peritoneum infection going on, not Adenovirus. I'm basing this on the fact that it started suddenly right after she laid, and after she laid is when she stopped eating. That combined with the black beard in her last days (indicating discomfort and pain) really does point to something going wrong during or right after laying her last clutch of eggs. There are so many things that can happen and go wrong from the time a dragon becomes pregnant or gravid, through to the time that they lay their final clutch, it's very hard to be able to tell sometimes. And it's not like these issues that result from egg laying are really all that common in healthy beardies, they really aren't. The same things happen with birds (I have been a parrot owner/breeder since I was 6 years old, my grandmother and mom both spent their lives breeding different species of parrots), and though it's not common in healthy birds that have experienced breeders, it does happen, and when it does it's totally unexpected.

It sounds to me like she was either egg-bound (you can't always palpate all the eggs, or even see them on a flat x-ray for that matter) or an egg from her last clutch ruptured, causing immediate discomfort and a lack of appetite, and very quickly after probably an infection as well. And since this prevented her from eating normally, let alone eating like they usually do after they lay eggs, she wasn't getting anywhere near the calories, fat, etc., just the nutrition in general that she needed after laying eggs, including the Calcium she needed to take in to replace what she used laying the eggs. So obviously it's impossible to fight off any infections when malnourished with depleted calcium stores, it turns into a vicious cycle. The only way to find out for certain is obviously by having a necropsy done, which isn't at all a bad idea if you still have her body. I say that because you're a breeder, so it may be something you want to find out in order to learn from.

I know it's extremely difficult when it's a pet, a family member that you love, I had to do this with a female green cheek conure breeder that I lost many years ago in much the same way. Breeding birds very much parallels breeding beardies in a lot of ways, actually in most ways from an anatomical/physiological and process point of view, but there is one huge difference: breeding pairs of birds/parrots are typically (probably 98%+ of the time) not hand-tamed, not friendly, and pretty much never interact with people at all, ever. So it's a lot easier to lose a breeding parrot than a beardie. Breeding pairs of birds are typically kept in a separate room that your pet birds don't ever go in, and they are kept in breeding cages or an aviary with their mate only. You only interact with them to feed them, clean their cages, and assist during breeding season. That's it. But I still get attached, I can't help it, even when my breeding pairs are biting the hell out of me when I'm feeding them, lol. But when I lost that green cheek and had no idea why, as it didn't present like egg-binding at all, I was extremely worried about every one of my breeders in the breeder's room getting sick and dying from the same thing. So I had a necropsy done, it only cost me around $150 including the serology and pathology, and it ended up that she had laid a clutch of 6 eggs, which is quite large for a green cheek conure, she had started laying on her eggs after #3 was laid, which is normal, she laid the last 3 eggs and I thought she was done. So I was checking her nest box twice a day, all was good, and while I was giving her the extra liquid Calcium and egg-food they get after laying (calcium injections IM) I saw no other eggs, her belly was flat and she was eating well. Well she had a 7th egg in her uterus that wasn't completely developed, was half size, and she stopped laying before it was delivered. Had I seen any sign that she had an egg left and couldn't lay it, I would have given her an injection of oxytocin to get her to lay it. But I had no idea. So the egg ruptured, she got a uterine infection, and died without me ever knowing anything was wrong. I didn't interact with her enough to know, but honestly even if I had been in the breeder's room with her 24/7 I wouldn't have known, because you try to not disturb them when they're in their nest boxes sitting on their eggs. So sometimes it just happens.

I hope that all of your other guys test negative for everything, I'm almost certain that this wasn't Adenovirus, and I hope this is one of the times I'm correct.