Thorson is Bad at Pooping

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adasimone

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I've had Thorson since April. She's somewhere between a year and two years old. She is terrible at pooping.

Since we got her, she goes weeks between pooping. After a week or so, I start giving her daily baths with belly rubs and feeding her pumpkin and prunes with olive oil. It takes up to a week of this before she will finally poop. She's noticeably bloated before she poops and deflates like a balloon after. There was a chunk of time where she was pooping about once a week without help, but I can't think of anything we were doing different then.

She never shows any signs of distress or discomfort when she's really bloated. She still eats and never has a dark beard or stress marks.

She had diarrhea (still 2 weeks between poops) so we took her to the vet in May. The vet saw no parasites but gave her antibiotics. This cleared up the diarrhea and she hasn't had it since.

She has huge urates. Like, 1.5-2 inches long. Does anybody have any advice to help her poop better?

Terrarium: Exoterra vivarium 36"x18"x18". She spends a lot of time on her window perch where we move her heater and have another UV light. She used to be in a 50 gallon tank. Before we got her her substrate was loose. We had her on slate tile in her old tank and she's on shelf liner in her new.

Temps: Hot side 100, Cold side 80.

Food: Currently she get's salad only for 2-3 days. It's always mustard greens with an extra ingredient. We rotate through bell peppers, butternut squash, pumpkin and blueberries. The salad is sprinked with calcium. Once she eats at least 2-3 solid salad meals, she gets a roach day. She gets ~5 smallish dubia roaches with a small salad. All the roaches are smaller than her eye space. I always make sure she's got warm temperatures after she eats.

She used to have a much worse diet (mealworms and not a lot of salad) but that's been better for months now.
 

bayoupig5

Sub-Adult Member
My Emmalee was a horrible pooper too (RIP), and sometime she did black beard on defecation. The longest Emmalee went was about 3 weeks!

Sounds like everything else in terms of set up and temps is ok? What type of UVB light is being used?

There are a couple of things I could tell you and maybe help with this:
1) It sounds like she is eating her salad which is great, as this helps with fiber content to get the poop moving. Emmalee ate very little veg so for her I would make or buy suitable baby food and provide her the veg this way. You may want to try offering some veg, this way with the salad routine as well if the poop issue continues. The extra water content in the slurry baby food will be good. Emmy got slurry mixtures for a lifetime.
2) You may have to increase the bath schedule daily and longer in times where she is having trouble. With Emmy if she had not gone after 10 -12 days I would start the bath process 1 time a day at first for 20-30 min. and then increasing to 2 baths a day for 20-30 min. Each time massaging the belly. She got so used to massages she would hoist her back legs up on my pinkies and sit there like this until I was done (I am going to miss that). When massaging I gently stroked both sides of the belly with my index fingers from ribs to vent. Sometimes...no poop, so same schedule the next day. Make sure the bath never gets cool. I always found bathing in the sink easier for this, as each time the bath cooled down I drained water and warmed it up again. Sometimes Emmy would go after the 3 or 4th warm up of water, and the water was always just a bit warmer than a regular bath water scenario.
3) Sometimes letting them out of the viv to run around a room would also help, the extra exercise or excitement of exploring would get the bowels going to.
4) Sounds like the bugs are fine for her I would suggest feeding her the softer smaller bugs throughout her life cycle if pooping is an issue (likely to be a problem throughout from my experience). You have taken away chitin ridden bugs which I would continue to do...and stay away from the male dubia the wings are definitely harder to digest.
5) Lastly, is she basking before and after each time you are feeding her? If any of mine are not basking that day, they do not get fed. They need those high temps on basking to digest properly.

Keep in mind though that not all dragons poop weekly, in Emmy's 10 years this was so rare. She was a usual 10 to 14 day pooper, without any issues or concerns, really. But I do know the frustration and worry that goes along with a dragon that is a horrible pooper. I know I have several posts about Emmy and her poop or lack there of on this site.
 
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