Nails missing

[christina0]

Hi

My bearded dragon has somehow torn off two of his back nails this morning, one from each back foot. There's no blood in the vivarium and he's moving about and eating fine. I can't seem to find what could have caused it. He's at least 11 years old so I'm kinda worried about his age. There's no infection or dirt where the nails use to be. Any advice would be much appreciated

 

[KarrieRee]

Please post pic of the foot https://www.beardeddragon.org/useruploads/ click on XIMG at the top of the message box then click on the pic it should post
Do you have a hammock in the tank ?
Karrie

 

[christina0]

 

[christina0]

No fabric or any soft material it could have got caught in. Same large asking stones and Komodo basking platform that has been in the tank 9 years

 

[KarrieRee]

ok so the soft material would not do that but a plastic type hammock would -- they are the green mesh type --- so none of that --- we need AHBD to look at her foot
Karrie

 

[AHBD]

Hi there, my guess is that with age the nails may become more brittle and prob. more prone to breaking off easily. Tile is a super hard flooring so it's different than what they live on in the wild. It does not look like any problem so not a problem at this point.

 

[christina0]

Age was in my mind as a factor too. I've had him 9 years so he's somewhere between 11 or 12 years old. Thanks for the reply.

 

[AHBD]

You're welcome ! He's living a good long life, hope he sticks around for a while longer ! Sounds like he's still doing well.

 

[SHBailey]

The same thing happened to our beardie (8 years old). Except that we noticed his little pinkie finger was bleeding in his bath and it turned out that the claw was gone, so it must have broken down to the quick. The bleeding stopped fairly quickly and I talked to our reptile vet about it. She said that it happens sometimes -- their claws get torn off or break, and sometimes they grow back and sometimes they don't. She said she didn't need to see him unless it gets infected, but it appears to have healed fine. His little finger is already dislocated (we don't know how that happened) so I'm not worried about the claw growing back. It would be just as well if it's not there to snag on something and do further damage.

So you're not alone with things like this happening, and apparently it's usually not serious.Their little fingers and toes seem so tiny and fragile.