Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My boyfriend's dad has a Day Gecko that I guess stopped eating for a little while, but then in the last two weeks he's been eating again and looking better.

In the last few days he's been shedding all his skin. Last night when I looked at him I noticed his mouth was open a tiny tiny bit. This morning he was sitting at the bottom of the cage and his mouth was wide open, and about mid-jaw his jaw was angeled downward, as if it was broken or something. I thought he was dead because he didn't move. When my boyfriend's dad came and looked, he squirted him with the water bottle and ran a few inches. Yay, alive. But.
His jaw is completely inverted now. Like, with his head resting on the ground the jaw is kind of backward and messed up. It seems like if the jaw were made of paper or something, and would just bend what ever way you moved it. There's no blood or anything.
Boyfriend's dad thinks it may be something called 'mouth rot' but doesn't know much about it or how it can be fixed, if it can.
Does anyone here know anything about this? I doubt there are any god herp vets in the area. Please give us any info you have.
The lizard isn't the type to be held so we can't really examine him completely.

They feed the gecko crickets and flies, and sometimes fruit.

that's metabolic bone disease, refered to as rubber jaw. you need to get him to a vet immediately. the vet will give him a calcium shot, hopefully he'll make it. make sure you give him plenty of calcium supplements on his food, and if you don't have a full spectrum uv light get one.

Thats a late state of metabolic bone disease.
Once that severe, there is not much hope. A Ca shot once a week plus balanced D3 supplementation may help, but I doubt.
Sth went completely wrong with the housing of that animal.
First you do have to supplement Calcium and vitamine D3 for these geckos even if you use a UVB bulb.
Also you have to carefully dose D3 not to exceed 100iu/week and kg animal.
Also a balanced Ca/P ratio in the food is essential. If this is below 1, even high amounts of dietary Ca are not metabiolized, even if D3 supplementation was OK.

Please tell your freind to take this seriously if the gecko survives or if he wants to buy a new one.

Ciqo

Ingo