Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hey everyone, I have a 6 year old spec, raised him myself, is currently 4 1/2 foot long with very good weight. I have noticed that he does not have very many big teeth anymore, they all seem to be new ones, or none at all. His gums seem very normal and he never misses a meal. His temps are perfect and diet is rats, chicken and some red meat. Everything is normal about him except his nasty looking teeth are gone. i have pics but can't seem to download them for some reason. Let me know what you think. Thanks Jason

I have seen this mostly with Crocodylus ssp. It turned out that due to a vitamin A deficiency the roots of the teeth weakened and as the teeth grew they would just fall out or be knocked out very easily. Hope this is of some help

That is very interesting. So you have sources on that, I'd like to study this more in-depth.

Bill

Interestingly if a larger portion of your diet was chicken meat and red meat you may be feeding a diet with insuffiecient vitamin A. Rats frozen for an extended time may also have vitamin breakdown.

While the missing teeth may not be a problem, it may or may not be indicative of a bigger problem as previously mentioned. A blood panel would be interesting, and if he turns out healthy you at least have some baseline values. Talk with your vet for more info on this.

I do feed frozen, and I buy a bunch at a time to cover all my snakes, What can i do or add to raise the vitamin a levels, I started giving him a multi-vitamin once a week, anything else. or maybe go with fresh pre-killed? Thanks for all the help. Jason

I did notice that the crocs that had fish as part of their diet kept more of their teeth, so that may be able to help as well.

Generally if you buy no more than a month or two of freshly frozen rodents no supplementation is needed. Feeding a variety is probably more beneficial, and as the other poster suggested, fish would make an excellent addition.
If you do decide to supplement I would keep things minimal as oversupplementation is also a problem. Perhaps a human dose of vitamin tablet a few times a week. (Extrapolate if your croc is larger or smaller than a person weight-wise) Natural light is also a positive thing to have, and if not available, UV lighting is a second best.