Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi everyone. Well my 5 month old, 16 inch, male BD's nails have been growing VERY fast!! And he is going through puberty so has been a little booger lately too. Whenever I hold him and then go to let him back in his cage he scratches me just by walking off my arm. Some of the scratches are a little deep (not enough to really bleed but good enough to be very red. I was wondering if I can get sick by this?? The deeper scratches havent seemed to gone away. They have been there for about a week and they arent very big but they havent decreased in size at all and when I wash my hands or put sanitizer stuff on them it burns VERY badly!! What should I do? I am going to either use a dremel to cut his nails or just regular nail clippers (which I would rather not do). When I get paid soon (either this week or the next) Im going to take him to the vet so if I havent done his nails by then I will ask the vet to because I dont want to hurt him. Thanks
Meghan
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1.0 Normal Bearded Dragon (Sam)
2.2 Russian Tortoises (Leo, Cole, Piper, Prue)
0.2 Dogs (Molly-Beagle, Zoei-German Shorthaired Pointer)
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I would not think that a normal dragon scratch would cause infection. Do you work around any contaminants or some other type of material or chemical that could cause the scratch to become infected? Have you changed soap or laundry detergent or maybe allergic to any of the sort? What substrate do you use? Could you be allergic to that? These are just a thoughts, nothing to base any factual knowledge on! Hope it goes away and put some neosporin on it. dv

I have to use antibiotic cream on even the tiniest scratches from dragons or they stay red and tender a long time. Not sure why it is. Diane