blinkin247
New member
Haven't posted recently, but I thought I'd poke in and share...
My ~16 month old beardie, Eddy, has been defecating very irregularly the past few weeks. When I first noticed it, I thought maybe his temps were off, but then he went on a two week stool free hiatus. I was of course rather concerned, as the last thing I wanted was to find him dead of an impaction one morning, so after all the home remedies (vegetable oil, 15-20 minute warm baths, etc) didn't work, I took him to the only vet in the area that sees exotics.
I took him out of the carrier in the exam room while waiting for the vet to come in, and while he was out he started squirming and clawing at me. As soon as I put him back in his carrier, he cocked his tail up and fired out the most rancid smelling stool I have ever seen him pass. The vet said this was actually not unusual, that many reptiles tended to take care of business at the vets office due to the change in scenery and being nervous. They took the stool off to do a fecal and meantime I cleaned up (I had picked him up to keep him from trouncing through it, and he had a good bit of the foulness caked on his tail, which kept whipping my arm as I held him).
One of the vet techs came in and asked if I'd had anything new in the tank, that they'd found a very hard something in the stool. I couldn't think of anything, his bedding is alfalfa meal and he eats mostly softbodied worms (silks mostly), supers, and the occasional cricket, though he rarely goes after crickets the same way he does supers.
The vet came in and told me that he was full of worms (from the smell of his stool, I'd have been more worried if she'd told me the fecal came back clean). She thought the hard lump in his stool might have just been from the worm infestation, and gave him a deworming compound and another dose for me to give him in a week (looking forward to that adventure, he already doesn't like it that I force fed him vegetable oil).
I just got done vacuuming out all of his bedding and soaking all of his tank furniture in bleach. Hopefully that kills any external infection vectors. Anyone else who has gone through this before, what do I expect next? I'm mostly just glad he's not impacted. Anything special diet wise? Or should I assume if that were the case the vet would have filled me in? Any insight is appreciated.
My ~16 month old beardie, Eddy, has been defecating very irregularly the past few weeks. When I first noticed it, I thought maybe his temps were off, but then he went on a two week stool free hiatus. I was of course rather concerned, as the last thing I wanted was to find him dead of an impaction one morning, so after all the home remedies (vegetable oil, 15-20 minute warm baths, etc) didn't work, I took him to the only vet in the area that sees exotics.
I took him out of the carrier in the exam room while waiting for the vet to come in, and while he was out he started squirming and clawing at me. As soon as I put him back in his carrier, he cocked his tail up and fired out the most rancid smelling stool I have ever seen him pass. The vet said this was actually not unusual, that many reptiles tended to take care of business at the vets office due to the change in scenery and being nervous. They took the stool off to do a fecal and meantime I cleaned up (I had picked him up to keep him from trouncing through it, and he had a good bit of the foulness caked on his tail, which kept whipping my arm as I held him).
One of the vet techs came in and asked if I'd had anything new in the tank, that they'd found a very hard something in the stool. I couldn't think of anything, his bedding is alfalfa meal and he eats mostly softbodied worms (silks mostly), supers, and the occasional cricket, though he rarely goes after crickets the same way he does supers.
The vet came in and told me that he was full of worms (from the smell of his stool, I'd have been more worried if she'd told me the fecal came back clean). She thought the hard lump in his stool might have just been from the worm infestation, and gave him a deworming compound and another dose for me to give him in a week (looking forward to that adventure, he already doesn't like it that I force fed him vegetable oil).
I just got done vacuuming out all of his bedding and soaking all of his tank furniture in bleach. Hopefully that kills any external infection vectors. Anyone else who has gone through this before, what do I expect next? I'm mostly just glad he's not impacted. Anything special diet wise? Or should I assume if that were the case the vet would have filled me in? Any insight is appreciated.
