Open wound (saw her vet) *new development!!!**

So last night I got home, was giving Ziva her normal pm love and snack, and I noticed this on her scales between her hips.
Cleaned up up, applied some SSD and called it a night.


Got up this am, cleaned her up again, and saw this!!! (Photo below)

I took her in with me and dropped her off at the sister Hosptial as our exotic vets there today. He cleaned her up, but has no clue what could have caused something like this besides maybe falling and bumping herself.

There are no live bugs left in her cage as she’s hand fed every meal due to poor vision, nothing sharp in her cage. All her woods rounded out.

Anyone have any other ideas of what caused this?

Today

That looks like a bite or puncture wound of some kind. I'm not sure what the source would be if there are no insects in the enclosure and nothing sharp to come in contact with. Hopefully the vet can get the wound cleaned and treated to prevent infection so it can heal quickly.

What kind of insects do you feed her ? And can you post a pic of her tank ?

CooperDragon":2jlgcbth said:

That looks like a bite or puncture wound of some kind. I'm not sure what the source would be if there are no insects in the enclosure and nothing sharp to come in contact with. Hopefully the vet can get the wound cleaned and treated to prevent infection so it can heal quickly.

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Right?!! It looks like something took a bite out of her.

It’s all cleaned up, I’m about to go get her on my lunch.

AHBD":23qpvi52 said:

What kind of insects do you feed her ? And can you post a pic of her tank ?

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I’m still at work and don’t have a current photo of her tank, I’ll post one later tonight.

She gets hand fed dubia, super worms, Horn worms, silk worms, she likes her bugs rotated.

Her vision is so bad she won’t even eat greens out of a bowl so everything is either hand fed or tong fed, so there’s no chance something is in her cage. If I hold the bowl up to her she’ll eat from it but most the time it ends with her taking bites out of the bowl. She’s been slowly declining in health this year : / but not to the point that it’s time to say good by.

AHBD":1760ajw4 said:

What kind of insects do you feed her ? And can you post a pic of her tank ?

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Here’s her tank. All the woods had its sharp edges filed down. Nothing pointy that can harm her. Sorry it’s a bit messy. Tomorrow’s weekly deep clean day.

It looks a bit better already.

She’s on SSD twice a day, with cleaning the SSD (Silver sulfadiazine) off with chlorhexidine 2% for each new application.

Good think I work at a vet. I’ve been out of chlorhexidine for a while now and amazon oddly won’t ship it to my address anymore so I just bought a gallon from our purchasing manager for half the price amazon sells it at lol.

Also sorry for the late replies, work kept me longer than expected. Yay emergencies.

Good morning(or afternoon or evening I suppose)

Ziva is one unhappy dragon this morning


I think it looks a little better.

I triple checked her cage again, took out everything, ran my hands over everything to make sure nothing was sharp. Still no sharp edges and no random bugs in her cage.

I once had a spider try to make a home in another of my 4 foot cages so I wanted to double check and make sure that wasn’t the case here.

Aside from puncture wound it does look similar to (nasty) spider bites I've seen. Brown recluse bites on humans come to mind. Perhaps a spider came and went at some point. Hopefully gone for good if that was the case. If the wound doesn't start to close up soon or if it starts to ooze perhaps it needs to be packed. Hopefully infection won't set in and the (gallon! :shock: ) of silver sulfadiazine does the trick.

CooperDragon":2vf3wj78 said:

Aside from puncture wound it does look similar to (nasty) spider bites I've seen. Brown recluse bites on humans come to mind. Perhaps a spider came and went at some point. Hopefully gone for good if that was the case. If the wound doesn't start to close up soon or if it starts to ooze perhaps it needs to be packed. Hopefully infection won't set in and the (gallon! :shock: ) of silver sulfadiazine does the trick.

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It’s a gallon of chlorhexidine lol. I have so much stuff I can use it on. It’s also super cheap for me to buy from work since I get it for just a few dollars above cost.

We do have wolf spiders that wander around our house, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility that one wandered in. Her visions so bad, she wouldn’t haven’t even have noticed it to eat it.

Thankfully it’s pretty small and looks a lot better already.

She’s got a recheck in a week.

It’s looking even better today. Still have not a clue what caused it. Saw another wolf spider running around my bathroom at 3am so I’m leaning towards that.

Welp, I found the reason. I’m doing a deep deep clean, and guess what I found lose in her cage.

A gosh darn freaking super worm!!! It must have bounced out when I was bowl feeding her and I missed it! I feel so so bad!!! ?? my poor baby girl! I’ve always been so so careful to make sure no insects get lose in her cage because I’m so worried about something like this happening.

I’m going to be extra extra extra careful going forward that she’s only tong fed so nothing can get into her cage. Some nights I let her chase the worms in the bowl and hold up the bowl for her, but no more!!! And chasing will be done outside her cage.

Her tank looks great and it's nice to see her healing ! I'm glad it was a superworm rather than a spider lurking somewhere and even possibly protecting an egg sac ! So yes, insects have a way of hiding under or even inside of tank decor so it's good that you looked so thoroughly. That was one persistent superworm to create that sized hole. It is pretty rare for insect to do damage though, I've had beardies since the 90's and with unintentional loose insects in thanks at times never had a bit. Superworms often will burrow in softer wood so if you see sawdust, check out what it is that's building a home in your beardie's home.

AHBD":3uoio848 said:

Her tank looks great and it's nice to see her healing ! I'm glad it was a superworm rather than a spider lurking somewhere and even possibly protecting an egg sac ! So yes, insects have a way of hiding under or even inside of tank decor so it's good that you looked so thoroughly. That was one persistent superworm to create that sized hole. It is pretty rare for insect to do damage though, I've had beardies since the 90's and with unintentional loose insects in thanks at times never had a bit. Superworms often will burrow in softer wood so if you see sawdust, check out what it is that's building a home in your beardie's home.

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The supers the only thing I can think of that could have caused this. I hope it’s a rare fluke of a super doing this and not a spider bite.

I changed it up a bit just for fun and lowered one end of her hammock and she spend the night in it.

It looks like it's healing really well! I'm glad to see such quick improvement =)