Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My beardie is having problems with his joints. For the last couple of weeks my beardie has not been moving around much. I mean he has always seem like a lazy guy but more pronounced lately.

For about 3 days now he han't been standing on his front legs much while basking, which has me worried. Also, tonight while giving him his bath I was moving his legs slowly and noticed there seemed to be friction there. Kind of like when your joints are stiff and they seem to not move freely.

Well I wonder if there's a possibility he may be getting too much calcium. I use MVB's and feed him collards, turnips, etc. and supplement the greens daily with the Trex VGF. He gets silkies about 3x a week and occasionally some supers.

I don't know, maybe it's the beginning of arthritis but I'm going to try and lay off on the supps and see what happens. I just have the gut feeling the MVB's, the greens and the supps. with d3 (Trex) seem like too much calcium. BTW, he's 8 mos old, 18.5" and weighs 400grams and has started to slow down on growth but still is gaining weight.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this please?

TX!!!!
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Rob Talkington

Rob,

You have only been using the VGF for a couple of months and calcium accumulation in the joints is something that would take a much longer period of time. I am not completely convinced that daily supplementation of calcium in a growing dragon is too much. I really do not think the supplements are causing any problem with your dragon's joints.

I took a big pinch of the VGF and weighed it it was 0.15g. The bottle says that the min Ca is 2.8% and the max Ca is 3.2% so we will say it is about 3%. That would be 3g per 100g of product. Therefore, each feeding you are giving (IF your dragon eats the entire big pinch) 0.0045g or 4.5 mg of calcium. RepCal for comparison would deliver roughly ten times that amount of calcium or 45 mg of calcium in the same amount if used to supplement. It seems that it would be very difficult to overdose calcium with the VGF product.

If you are really worried I would have radiographs done and possibly bloodwork to evaluate the blood calcium level and calcuimhosphorous ratio. Just my two cents.
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Stacey

They have always been pure white but lately have had somewhat of a yellowish/brown hue to them and seemed a little hard. Granted, I hadn't messed with the urates in the past but squeezing them in the past through the papertowel they didn't seem to be quite as hard as they are now. I guess that's another reason I thought there was too much calcium.
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Rob Talkington

I will take a recent picture for you tomorrow. He/she (my gut is leaning toward "he" has a beautiful red throat and tummy!

I have noticed with Fuego that ever since I switched to silkworms, his urates are drier and he has a lot of fluid around the feces and the urates.
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Stacey

>>I will take a recent picture for you tomorrow. He/she (my gut is leaning toward "he" has a beautiful red throat and tummy!
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>>I have noticed with Fuego that ever since I switched to silkworms, his urates are drier and he has a lot of fluid around the feces and the urates.
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>>Stacey

Awe, that's cool! I can't wait to see him. Hey, I just picked up 6 firebellie toads and my blood python arrived a few days ago. Geez, I swear it's crazy how fast one can accumulate herps once you get your first one!!

Anyway, FYI, I've been feeding silkies to him for 6 mos now and don't feed as many as I used to. I'm going to take him off the supps for a couple of weeks and see what happens.

I'll look forward to that pic!!! BTW, I saw you got all your babies sold. Congrats.
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Rob Talkington

An easy way to rule out calcification would simply be to bring him in to the vet. Your vet should be able to detect dystrophic calcification of the joint by radiography.
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Russ

>>An easy way to rule out calcification would simply be to bring him in to the vet. Your vet should be able to detect dystrophic calcification of the joint by radiography.
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>>Russ
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Rob Talkington