Annalouise":1e50dzk5 said:
claudiusx":1e50dzk5 said:
A piece of cement or concrete that size should pass through with no real issues.
Keep up with the feedings and make sure your basking temps are proper to help facilitate digestion which will help push the foreign object out.
There is another thread from last night here of a dragon who ate a penny. You can follow the advice given in that thread for this case too.
The goal is to continue feeding a normal diet to push the object through, but to also supplement with baby food once a day or every other day to help things move along if anything is getting stuck.
I wouldn't worry about any chemical reactions......
-Brandon
Thank you for the reassurance. I am working all weekend so the soonest I could take him to the vets would be Monday. He poops regularly so he should poop before then, in which case I will check for cement pieces.
I've asked a couple other bearded dragon places and they seem to say vets or he will die, which is really fuelling my panic. In reality I always wait to see if a problem will right itself before seeking medical care, including for my cat (who has lasted 20 years so far) and myself. I find going for medical care before waiting to be a waste of time, as usually you are sent away and told to come back in a week if the problems still there. Plus if you wait then you can gather a bit more information about the problem before going, like knowing if beardie is still managing to poop or not.
Wont hurt to take him to a reptile vet and ask for an xray to determine if there is a likely issue .
This will at least tell you what you are dealing with since you can't be sure how large the fragment was because it all happened so fast.
I think it's worth the vet visit for the reassurance it will give you even if he did ingest it .
All well and good to down play these incidents when it's NOT YOUR PET, but really better safe than sorry later if you did nothing but wait.
There are options available for a competent reptile vet if the fragment is deemed to be an issue.
I know of a bluetongue skink that belongs to a friend that swallowed a lego block ( small brightly coloured lego blocks are irresistible to skinks and dragons (who have excellent colour vision and thing they are food) . The vet put the skink under and removed the block using a suction device inserted past the glottis into the stomach.
Skink was awake and none the worse for it an hour later and the owner was much relieved but a little poorer.
The uptake is , sooner the vet sees the dragon, the easier it's going to remove the fragment if it needs to be removed. Waiting turns an easy fast procedure into a very invasive major surgical procedure with high risk.
If there are any sharp edges on the fragment , these can do serious damage on the way to the bottom end of the GIT , ie perforate the GIT , this would be bad. This was the main risk and why the vet decided to mechanically remove the lego block from the skink's gut.
So taking the wait and see approach has it's risks and you will likely be very anxious until you see the fragment deposited in a poo , or upchucked.