This has not been a good week, oh to be last week again.
I lost a December baby last Wednesday or Thursday. The baby had a large growth in his neck. I took him to the herp society meeting where a reptile person from the zoo looked at him. He noticed that the baby had a rubbery jaw and swollen arms. He has seen this in geckos with calcium issues. A few others concurred it may be a calcium issue. A professor in biology/herpetology suggested that the calcium issue may go back as far as Mushu and that her diet may not provide enough calcium for her and frequent breeding. I noticed the other day on two other December babies that they had heads that were a little different looking and looked a lot like the dead one. Upon checking them, they both had rubbery jaws, the start of a growth in their neck, and walked slowly. The other two December babies did not show signs of this problem. One thing I have noted with these babies is their refusal to eat pinkies (one of them does eat pinkies and he was one of the babies without a noticeable problem). This is the first time I have had baby salvators refuse pinkies. I feed them entirely crickets. I do not supplement my crickets. I have not done so in years for anything I feed crickets. I provide my crickets greens, veggies, and fruits and have never had this problem before.
I called the zoo person and he suggested treating the "rubbery" ones with pedialyte and calcium via a syring/tube. This treatment is similar to one he has used successfully to help problem geckos. So, for the past 2 days I have been doing just that. Both rubbery babies receive 2 cc's of pedialyte with ground calcium tablets. I am using Walmart bought Spring Valley Calcium plus Vitamin D 600 mg tablets. The tablets have 60% calcium and 31% Vitamin D. To the best of my knowledge, it appears that these tablets are about the same as the powder in Rep-Cal. On the first day, I forcefed both rubbery monitors a single cricket. I know that is contraversial, and it probably was not necessary. In fact, when I placed the babies back in the enclosure both of them actively pursued crickets on their own. Neither appeared thin or hungry. They did have a lot of trouble catching the crickets and keeping them once they had them. I did not, and will not, forcefeed again unless it appears a baby is starting to thin. I gave the other two babies who were not rubbery doses of the pedialyte/calcium as well. Obviously, it is too early to tell if this will be successful in reversing the problem, but I will keep the forum updated. I will now supplement my crickets with calcium. Also, I gave Mushu a calcium tablet via a rat.
A newborn from last week died yesterday night. No idea why. He appeared to be just fine. However, he was one that was cut out of the egg by me. I had seen him just an hour or two before he died and he had been active, very alert, and seemingly in good health. He was dead in the water container. I suppose he may have drowned, but that seems unlikely. I have no explanation.
The biggest setback: Labyrinth is dead.
Last Thursday Mushu became aggressive toward him. This is a sign that she is gravid and does not want him around (she's been a bit irritable with the iguanas too). I opened the door and he charged me, ran right past me (which means Mushu had been really aggressive), through the hall, down the stairs, and into the laundry room. It was actually quite comical because you can either be amused or soil yourself when a 5 foot aggressive lizard charges you and runs rampant through your house.
I left him in the laundry room. I assumed (and was wrong) that although cool, it was not critically cold, in the laundry room. Normally, he has a temporary enclosure in which he spends Mushu's laying time. This time, however, there was a rescue female salvator (and potentially future mate and new bloodline) in his temporary enclosure. I did not want to put them together. I had a partially built holding enclosure in the garage, but ran into some problems with it over the weekend and it did not get finished. Again, I assumed he would be fine in the laundry room.
I checked on him yesterday with the intent to move some animals around and get him in the temporary enclosure the rescue is in. He was dead. Worse, apparently I still have a loose rat in my house and it had eaten his eyes and part of a foot. I do not know (and it is not really important) whether he froze first and was eaten later, or if the rat was able to kill him due to the cold temperatures. After finding him dead, I measured the temperature in the laundry room... 54-55 degrees. Definitely not a healthy temperature to keep a monitor at for an extended period of time. In fact, a violation of the very guideline I tell people (cold is only a problem if they cannot warm up in the day... well, he had no warm spot in the laundry room and was cold all the time).
I should have:
not taken that rescue. I was not prepared for another large monitor at the time and had to scramble to find a place to put it. I exceeded my immediately available resources, and Labyrinth died for it.
measured the laundry room. There is no excuse for not doing it. I have a temp gun, digital thermometers, and it takes 30 seconds to do so. I assumed too much and was too confident. If I had taken that 30 seconds of prevention, I would not have left Labyrinth in there.
heated the laundry room. Regardless of the actual temperature, I knew it was cool in there. I have spare heaters. I should have put one in there. In fact, had I done so I could probably have just used the laundry room indefinitely for him.
accounted for that missing rat. I blame my rat killing german sheperd who apparently did not kill this one (humor... I blame myself). We still cannot find it.
So. There are my major blunders for the week. Hopefully someone will learn stuff from them.
Labyrinth: 11/99 - 3/9/04
My only amusement really was that Stevie, Labyrinth's 2 year old son, is longer than Labyrinth was at the time of his death. Stevie: 5 feet and a few inches. Labyrinth: 5 feet but missing a few inches of tail.
Obviously the website will need to be updated, but there are old pics of Labyrinth.
Salvators
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^x^ Bloodbat ^x^
