Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My Bearded Dragon is about 6 months old. He has just started to walk funny. He does not stand on all fours any more. He more or less wiggles around, barely using his legs. I am very worried and have no clue why this is happening. Please help if you can. Thanks!

I found this last night, also read that you should mist daily - I don't know if you're doing that. MUAH . I hope it helps, I know you really like the little guy.

Calcium/vitamin deficiency:
This is a serious problem that can have permanent effects on the life of your bearded dragon. Too little D3 and calcium can lead to metabolic bone disease. Some early symptoms of this problem include the shaking, twitching, or stiffness of limbs (especially rear legs), separation of the mouth, and difficulty chewing food. If this problem is caught early enough, supplementation and exposure to natural sun can be good remedies. Calcium deficiency is often seen in older dragons, or under supplemented dragons. There is also the possibility of over supplementing your dragons, causing a myriad of problems all its own.

The water bowl may not be enough. Sometimes they won't drink from it. So in addition to misting him, you can mist his lettuce and he'll ingest some water from that.

loss of the use of limbs typically means metabolic bone disease, as mentioned by bluemike. MBD is caused mostly by low blood calcium. When the body is low in calcium, it starts leaching calcium out of the bones, turning them soft and brittle. Typically this shows with weakness of limbs, shaking, twitching, a floppy or rubbery jaw, etc.

Lack of calcium in the diet or no addition of calcium to the diet (ie dusting insects with calcium powder), insufficient exposure to UVB rays (either no exposure to direct sunlight or not using UVB producing lights with indoor dragons) or feeding foods that contain too high a concentration of oxalates, which bind calcium, making it unusable by the body.

If the dragon is showing such obvious signs of MBD, the best thing to do is take it to a vet right away. They can take blood tests and make sure lack of calcium is the cause of the dragon no longer using it's legs. They can also inject special liquid calcium directly into the bloodstream as well as other things.

If you can't get the dragon to a vet right away (within a day), the things you can do to slow the disease long enough to you can take it to a vet is as follows:

Feed calcium rich greens such as collard greens, endive, escarole, dandelion greens, mustard greens. Dust insects (for a 6 month dragon, usually one dusting per day is fine) with a calcium powder containing D3. Start using a light that produces UVB light (if you don't already). Good brans are repti-sun or repti-glo (5.0, 8.0 or 10.0 if you can get them, the weaker 2.0 are not really worth buying). If the weather is warm enough (at least 75F and sunny) put your dragon into a small rubbermaid container and take him outside. Include a hide and basking log/rock and a shaded area(which can be the hide). An hour of sunlight a day is more than enough exposure for the dragon to synthasize all the vitamin D3 needed to properly metabolize calcium. Don't leave your dragon unattented during these times outside, as birds, cats or dogs can harm your dragon. Also you want to make sure no wild insects get into the cage. Though most are harmless, some, such as the firefly, are deadly.

If you have been supplementing calcium, D3, providing UVB light etc all along, other possible causes of leg paralize, especially if it was very sudden (ie dragon perfectly find one day, crawling around on it's belly the next) its possible it has received an injury to the spine, either from a fall, something falling ontop of it, or if you have any heavy furnature in the cage, he may have tried to crawl underneath it and the weight pressed into his back. If this is the case, immediate vet care is needed to determine the extent of damage and to treat it. Unfortunately damage to the spine may not be reversable, depending on how severe it is. Bruising usually heals fine, but severing cannot be repaired. The vet can determine how bad it is.

If the dragon's front legs are working fine, but it's only his rear legs, it could be due to pressure on teh lower spine from either impaction (ingestion of substrate) or too large prey items (or too many prey items) being fed. Crickets and most similiar type insects should be the same size as the distance between teh dragon's eyes. Larger crickets can cause pressure on the lower spine and paralyze the rear legs (sometimes just temporary, but if the pressure is too great, it could be partially or permanent even after the food has finally passed). Alot of insects can also cause simplar results, though typically dragons who are over fed during a meal will regurge. Hard to digest insections (mealworms, hard shelled insects or beetles) can also cause this and impactions.

Too large prey items may break down and pass through (ie poop) in a day or two on their own without any lasting effects. However, it's best to reduce feeding for the next day or tow, increase the basking temp to about 115-120F (still providing cooler areas to bask as well), give the dragon a long soak in luke warm water (around 75F) for about 10-15 minutes, allowing the dragon to drink as much as he wants during the bath. (if he does poop, change water and let him soak some more, though if he poops fine, but still can't move his legs, may be MBD anyway, see above).

If he is housed on loose substrate, such as calcium based sands (calci-sand, bone-aid) or crushed walnut shells, impaction could be causing. The above methods for too large food items, may work..but more times than not, a vet trip will be needed. The vet can try several things to help remove the impaction, including laxatives, enama and if severe enough, surgery.
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PHLdyPayne

If not MBD and not impaction or injury it could also be due to a vitamin "B" defincency. It can mimic MBD and causes the joints to become sore as well as internal organ issues. No matter what the cause I would reccomend a trip to the vet.
He/she will want to do some blood work and if nothing shows there then an x-ray to look for injuoes or impactions. The key to getting your beardie better is to take care of this now and don't wait to see if it resolves itself.

There is still one last possible cause which is not a problem at all. If your cage floor is wet from misting or they splashed water on their floor from their water bowl lots of beardies will pretend to swim on the wet floor and drag themselves around enjoying it.