Orange Color in Urates?

[Quelaag]

So I'm back with another overly worried post-- sorry. Anyways, I noticed an orange tint to my beardies urates and I can't figure out why. He's not acting sick, his appetite is fine, he isn't showing any signs of dehydration, his enclosure is cleaned out once a week, he hasn't eaten anything that would cause that coloration-- we mostly feed him greens and green veggies. The only thing I can think of it maybe that we're over dusting his food, but we actually cut back on his calcium supplement recently when we realized that we were only supposed to give it to him 5 times a week instead of every day so I feel awful for that. He gets vitamins 3 times a week.

Unless-- could urates change from not getting enough calcium? Should I try to up the dose more? That's really the only thing I can think of that could be wrong with him. His temps are fine-- it's currently about 91 in there with his basking rock being 105. He has a Powersun 100 WAT UVB light for the daytime and a non-light heating lamp for the night time. I don't think that would affect urates though..

But yeah, I need a second opinion. Should I wait it out and see if it happens again or go ahead and try to make adjustments to calcium/vitamins? Like I said, he isn't acting any different. And I highly doubt it's parasites since I recently had his poop tested to be on the safe side after my future sister-in-law's beardie got pinworms. He turned out negative for anything and that was about a week ago.

Sorry if this is a super dumb question I just worry very easily. D:

 

[Tonja]

It would help if you could post a picture. Sometimes, if they eat a orange or yellow vegetable that will affect the color. Also to much calcium can affect the color and the urate may appear to be off color and crystalized in part where it attaches to the poo. Babies only need one feeding a day 5 days a week lightly dusted with calcium and the other two days one feeding per those two days with a multivitamin. Adults can go 3-4 times a week with calcium and 2 with a multivitamin. I hope this helps some.

 

[Quelaag]

It would help if you could post a picture. Sometimes, if they eat a orange or yellow vegetable that will affect the color. Also to much calcium can affect the color and the urate may appear to be off color and crystalized in part where it attaches to the poo. Babies only need one feeding a day 5 days a week lightly dusted with calcium and the other two days one feeding per those two days with a multivitamin. Adults can go 3-4 times a week with calcium and 2 with a multivitamin. I hope this helps some.

Sadly I didn't think about getting a picture until after it got cleaned up. :C He pooped a second time and his urate is back to being white and normal so I have no clue what caused it to be orange. It could be that he's still getting too much calcium so I may need to experiment with giving him slightly smaller doses and work with that. Before my fiance and I were dusting both his crickets AND veggies, but I think I'm going to stick with just lightly dusting his veggies. That and with us gut loading the crickets with calcium I'm sure he's getting more than enough calcium. Ugh, I feel like such a jerk for potentially giving him too much. I'm a new beardie owner so I'm still learning but man do I feel bad.

 

[Tonja]

Don't beat yourself up over it. It happens, sometimes mine will get a bit to much and the urate is crystalized or an off color so I just skip a day of calcium and go back to the light dusting.

 

[Taterbug]

If you are using a good dry gutload with high calcium, you may be giving to much. The greens shouldn't need dusting at all, the high calcium ones do well enough on their own.