My beardie, Nairobi, has been impacted for 3 weeks now. I'll start from the beginning. A while ago I tried feeding my beardie freeze dried crickets as opposed to the juicy canned crickets. (Obviously with plenty of fresh live crickets. It's just more convenient.) She took to them really well but it was a huge mistake. We noticed she hadn't been pooping so we started giving her soaks and massages the way we did for her last impaction. (Which worked immediately during her first impaction.) Well that didn't work so we took her to the vet. She is to this day extremely active, alert, has a great appetite, and generally very normal acting. The vet gave us her advice of liquid diet, and 2 soaks and massaged a day. We brought her home, fixed her up some apple sauce, calcium, and vegetable oil. To our relief she excreted a good bit of mucus and tiny little poop. We bought baby food, prune juice, and olive oil and have been giving her mixtures of liquid for meals with an occasional live cricket. Over the past week she has pushed out 3 little marble sized poops. Hopefully with the liquid diet, warm soaks and massages, and lots of love, she'll be back to normal! If there's any advice anyone could offer, please do! Even though she's basically normal aside from the lack of poop, I have been a very stressed out beardie mama.
Hi there, Nairobi sounds like a much loved pet. How old is she ? Freeze dried cricks are O.K in a pinch when no food is available, but only in small amounts and as long as the dragon is reasonably well hydrated.
I think she'll be fine, she is displaying any symptoms of distress , you say she's active so just offer the baby food, prune juice + olive oil and a bit of extra water added in. You can cut the soaks back to every other day, make them warmer than usual, that helps stimulate the G.I. tract. If she's not eating much then she might just have the smaller b.m's. But all in all it sounds like she's fine.
Thank you so much! She's a bit over a year!
A bit of a progress update:
She's been pushing out tiny hard poops once a day now and the hard lump in her tummy is now HALF THE SIZE that is was!!!!
I suspect she'll be completely cleared out soon enough! I'll be sure to update once she's completely better!
I am ecstatic at her progress! It's nice to know that love and care that I've been giving her is paying off!