I Think Dewey Has MBD

[DeweysMom]

First of all, I'm very happy to say that my sweet Dewey's still hanging in there! Some of you may remember last Sept I thought I was going to lose him. He was very congested and his vet suspects he has a heart problem. With the help of a couple of different types of antibiotics and a nebulizer, his breathing cleared up and he started to do great once again.

Now, we have a new problem. When he was sick he didn't eat much and not thinking I didn't get liquid calcium for him. Even before he got sick he wouldn't always eat and I tried tough love to get him to eat (at the time he only wanted hornworms) so he was without calcium for a while. As a result, now I think that he has MBD. One day I noticed when I had him outside that his head started shaking. Not violently, it was barely even noticeable. Almost like it was vibrating. I immediately got him some liquid calcium and started giving it to him three times daily. I was giving him .6cc.

It's in the 80's today so when I went home for lunch I brought him outside again. He was doing great, but all of a sudden he started struggling to get out of my hands so I put him on the ground. While he was on the ground I could see he was twitching on his sides and even his tail. It freaked me out and now I feel horrible that I didn't see something else was wrong with him up until now. I can honestly say that I think Dewey's going to be my one and only beardie. I'm literally heartbroken that he's had to go through so much in his short life. I love him to death, but it's been one thing after another with him. Apparently I either got one from bad lines (which now that I know more about his breeder is a good possibility) or that I'm just not cut out to own reptiles (also another good possibility).

He's kept inside in his 4x2x2 viv the majority of the time. Now that the weather's warm enough I try to get him at least a half hour a day out in the sun, somedays I can't. I use a ReptiSun 10.0 36" light and I've been replacing it every 4 months to be safe since he's had health issues in the past. I'm due to change it again in July. This is the liquid calcium I've been giving him http://www.beautifuldragons.com/Calciumglub.html. Is giving him .6cc three times a week enough or should I up it? Should I be using a different kind? Anything else I can do to help him?

 

[AHBD]

Hi there....I'm sorry that Dewey is having such struggles [ and so much stress for you ], but it's great to hear that he battled through the respiratory problems. Is he a good size + weight ? Can you post those , or put up a picture ? One other thing you might try is some B-complex....his symptoms may be calcium or vitamin B deficiency. Those things can both be cleared up. As far as only eating hornworms, it's O.K. to spoil them when they are sick, at least to get nutrients in them and make them happy,so a hornworm every couple days is O.K. Give him the biggest fattest ones, and drip the liquid calcium + vitamins in his mouth as he's chewing. For more ideas you might p.m. Tracie [ Drache613] I hope he gets through this as well. GO DEWEY !

 

[DeweysMom]

Dewey is a good sized boy. He weighs 620g. The pic below shows his weight. I'm able to zero out the scale when something's on it so it's not calculating the canvas he's sitting on. When he only wanted hornworms was before he got really sick. Once he started feeling better he started eating his salad again along with supers, silks, and butters (still no go on roaches and I've not tried crickets again). His salad appetite seems to slowed down a lot, but he still loves his worms!

Here are a few pics from today. Once is him being weighed and the others are from when he was outside. This was after he was twitching. He's always a bit of a black beard, but today he really darkened it when we went outside. I'm not sure if that's the twitching/MBD related or just excitement from being outside.

 

[Drache613]

Hello,

I honestly don't think any of this is your doing, with husbandry, etc. I feel it is his morph which is the hypo trans which adds to his issues, personally. They are highly inbred unfortunately which does tend to decrease their health in the long run.
Dewey is beautiful & you have done a great job with him!
He is having twitches right now, how often? He hasn't had any seizures has he?

Tracie

 

[DeweysMom]

No seizures and today was the first time I saw him twitching on his body. The head shaking thing I saw a couple of times last year and again today.

 

[AHBD]

I was going to ask if he was transluscent, and it's right there in your signature. I agree that they are more prone to health problems than practically any other morph. It's still not even recommended to breed trans to trans. But you have done a great job with him and he's beautiful. Since he's back to eating well, you might slowly decrease the worms and increase the salad again.

 

[DeweysMom]

So it might be his morph and not MBD? Should I still give him .6cc of liquid calcium 3x weekly? Increase, decrease? Anything else I can do?

 

[Drache613]

Hello,

That is a good question. Those types of morphs are inbred which can cause metabolic issues such as calcium absorption problems.
So it makes them more apt to developing problems such as this. I think it would be a good idea to continue to calcium & treat as metabolic bone disease.


Tracie