My bearded dragon ate a "wild" tomato horn worm before I was able to stop him what do I do? It was in our yard and we don't put pesticides or poisons down but I know that it could have come from somewhere that did use pesticides.
We only have a small kitchen scale and it only weighs in Grams he weighs 328 G or 11.57Oz. he seems fine he is zooming around my room. My family is very holistic so we do have activated charcoal, how would I go about giving him the charcoal?
It's been about 35 minutes as soon as I saw Reptar eat it I got him in and got on here for help, it wasn't a very big horn worm it was smaller than my pinky finger.
It's really a judgement call then at this point. Usually they would start having I'll effects by now if something was going to happen. Administering the AC at this point would be more so for peace of mind.
If you want you can just keep a close eye on him for the rest of the night and see how things go.
Brandon, may I ask what the side effects are?
Reptar is my second bearded dragon my first (Puff) sadly suddenly passed away on Fathers day and we have no idea what could have happened to him, so I am on edge right now.
Toxic effects usually cause lethargic behavior. they basically just start acting sick. More serious toxins could cause seizures or convulsions.
Other signs of distress would be a black beard. That's almost always seen when they are getting hit hard by a toxin.
At this point, it being almost an hour, I'd say you can calm down a bite more (I know its hard) as long as hes acting normal and has no black beard.
If he drinks in the bath you could try to give him a bath so he can have some water. Make sure he has at least an hour after the bath under the lights to dry off before bed.
I'm sorry if I alarmed you at first. I just wanted to get you the details you needed for worst case scenario incase he was really acting sick! I'm so glad he isnt!
Right now he is snuggled into my neck but when I put him down he perks up but looks annoyed, I'm just super worried about him because I got him from a couple off Craigslist who no longer had time for him. He had the beginnings of MBD, several stuck sheds (when he started to shed they would pull the shed off) and I looks like when they were pulling off sheds they might have damaged his nose.
And to ease your mind a bit more, I did a bit more research into the toxic compound that would be present in the wild hornworms. Apparently it doesnt very readily absorb through the GI system, at least not like a toxin such as a pesticide would. and it seems that it would require a decently high amount of the toxin to be ingested to cause any serious issues. Since this was such a small worm, it likely didnt have much of the toxin for a 300g+ dragon. It would be more of a concern if it were a larger worm, and multiple were ate.