We went to pick my daughter up from work today (she works at a pet store)
and several people were standing outside looking in a box. Of course
I figured it meant my daughter wanted to bring something new home when
she asked me to come look....didn't expect it to be two savannah monitors.
My daughter is typically into cute fuzzies, while my husband and
I have reptiles.
To make a long story short....there were two savannahs, one was
about a 19 inches long and the other is about 12 inches and just pitiful, nothing but bones
and skin and obviously suffering from MBD. One leg was not working
properly and had very little righting reflex to the foot. The couple
that had them had gotten them from someone the night before and
wanted to see if we would buy them. I told them no but that we would
take them. They said they felt sorry for them and had no way to
properly set them up so gave them to us.
We got them home and soaked the dehydrated one. It drank water the
entire time it was in the water and continued to drink from the
dish once we put it in a tank. We have them temporarily set up
in 40 gallon tubs. We will work at making permanent enclosures this week.
I have several questions. First, on feeding. We offered food to the
larger, healthy one after we set it up and it ate a fuzzy and a three
day old chick in no time. How often and how much should we feed? Also, what is
the recommended food? We have available at all times...chicks, mice,
crickets, and mealworms.
Second, any suggestions on rehabing the emaciated one? We had our
herp vet look at her right away and he said to get her hydrated first.
We gave her liquid calcium and let her out in the sun, in the yard
for about half an hour, with us watching of course and making sure
she didn't over heat. We offered her a pinkie, some crickets and a super worm
and she was not interested. Since she had been through so much today
I think we work more on getting some food in her tomorrow, she looks
amazingly well just for having drank the water. It almost seems
as if she was not offered water in some time. Another thought is
that she had been kept with the larger one....would it have bullied her
and not allowed her to drink or eat?
Anyway...we just want to make sure we can do the best for them.
The other herps we have are....
rankins dragons, leopard geckos, russian tortoises, red eyed crocodile skinks
collard lizards, uromastyx geyris, great plains ratsnake, trans pecos ratsnake,
and a yellow spotted night lizard.
THanks for any suggestions you can give.
Nina
