Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Ok, before you all attack me and bombard me with questions like, "Did you do this right?" and things of that nature, I have been breeding beardies for almost 3 years now. I have never had any problems up until now and I don't know what is wrong with this clutch. The clutch had 18 total, and of that 18, only 4 remain. Just all of a sudden they had been dropping like flies. I first thought maybe the crickets had been "dirty" or something of that nature because one of my frogs whom had been eating from the same batch of crickets suddenly died as well. I don't know what's happening and I feel terrible. Can anyone shed some light on this?

Sherry

Sherry,

Some questions need to be asked to limit down possiblities, without a necrospy on one and full pathology work up it will be almost impossible to say for sure, but there are sometimes that clutches fail to thrive about or many are losts in one clutch and we can try to rule out some of those

How old was the mother? Babies from mothers over 7 years seem to start having a higher die off rate and problems.

Have you cleaned anything that is plastic or resin based, inculding silicon in the tanks with bleach water.this is something that has happened in several clutches the past few years when they seemed healthy otherwise and we think the bleach heating up under the light may have a toxic effect on the babies. We recommend all items that have to be bleached, to siak at least 24 totally submerged and then air dry another 24 hours. Better yet, used a proven safe cleaner like nolvasan

How old were the first babies when they started being ill or dying? Viral infections usually run in cycles of 10 days to 2 weeks, many virus are shed by the mother when she lays egg, live on the shells and infect the babies either through the pourous eggs or when they hatch and walk on the shell (which way is not know for sure yet)

Crickets or food, can be a vector for many bacterias and some molds that can cause mycosis in the liver, they crickets get this from the feed they are fed on, most notable is corn grains that mold with a very violent reacting mold, the circkets are immune to any problem from it, but the reptiles it is deadly too.

Labs will accept crickets for analysis, I know that IDEXX will and some have come back with really poor results, one test showed 4 types of gram negative bacteria, 2 gram positive and 1 mold fungus........ those crickets would have been toxic over a period of time fed to reptiles, especially small babies.

I can not mention who the bad results were from, there were 2 companies (we can not show clear line of "evidence", but I can tell you 3 others we checked that were clear and healthy, Armstrongs Crickets, Timberline and Reptilefood.com
-----
www.reptilerooms.com

Thanks for your reply. To answer your questions, no, the beardie wasn't old. She is 3 and this was her first time breeding.

Secondly, I haven't used bleach on anything for the babies. I always clean everything with scaulding hot water and a toothbrush.

The third question seems like it could be likely. They all died one after another over a span of maybe a week and a half. They were all at least a month old though.

Before I posted my message here, I did come across some website talking about necropsy of the liver and such, and I was thinking maybe that was what happened. I just never had anything like this happen before. So if that's the case, is there something wrong with the mother? The father had bred before and all those clutches came out fine, but they were with other females. What do you think?

I would say that if you had frogs that died in the same time frame we are talking about something other than genetic issues. Be it food, disease, or environmental. If you have other dragons I would have invested in the necropsy. The risk is there to loose an entire collection.

I don't know what more to say.????

Good luck.
-----
Joel R

Coming Soon!
www.SpikesAndScales.com