Hi all! It's been a while! I'm back with some small concerns about Mushu. Starting about 3 weeks ago, he chowed down on a superworm and then took an.. odd breath? It has a weird whistle to it. It happened once, and only right after swallowing. I have watched him closely, and he acts fine, his appetite is great, and it is only occasionally, again, after eating. There is no shortage of vets in my area so I can take him in if needed. I'm pretty sure it's a possible RI, but I wanted to double check that it wasn't something like eating too fast. (He seriously tries to leave his cage when he sees me holding the supers cup)
I just want a visual check of his weight too. I attempted to weigh him, but the scale was a tad small, and he stuck off of the plate I zeroed out on it, and it finally read on 350g. I have a feeling he's more towards 420 or so (Any scale suggestions would be great, I need one that works better)
I got him started on supers a while ago, and since then he REFUSES to eat greens. I tried cilantro, I tried 2 days without bugs, water, hand feeding, no dice. It is a bag mix of mustard, turnip and collard greens. I feel like it is contributing to his issues. He does get a few bits that come with his supers.
I didn't realize that the hammocks were labeled as dangerous, I'm definitely going to be ordering him some new ones - and see if he'll take to silkworms. He's definitely become much more picky!
(I'll add too, I do have some roaches, and I'm trying to make those his staple)
I use just a simple, digital kitchen scale from Walmart, I think it cost $15, they had probably 5 or 6 different digital kitchen scales ranging from $14 to $25, the difference being pretty much extra memory storage and one had a much larger platform. The $15 works great, I just tare a little plastic container, then plop them inside it. Works fine, and is very accurate. So any department store like Walmart or Target, or a kitchen store like Bed, Bath, and Beyond will have very accurate digital scales that go down to grams.
A good note here... he has been VERY active for the last two days, and I heard no sounds from him today. However, when he missed going for a superworm and grabbed a piece of greens, he ate the corner on his mouth, and thrashed his head super fast so the green fell off. He's eaten them like a CHAMP the past 4 years, bit right when I introduced supers.. he stopped.
I am still planning to see a vet. I just can't find a reputable one (of many) here. There is one close, but I work at a petstore, and I do not wish to use their services. Any suggestions in Virginia would be great!
He does look like a very fit + healthy adult, definitely not a juvenile. How old is he now ? You can keep offering greens at least once a week , hoping that one day he'll resume eating them. Until then just gt load the insects with the good veggie's and he'll get some benefit from them. You can also experiment with smoothies, adding good leafy greens as well as some type of fruit or honey to sweeten it a bit to see if he'll eat it that way.