Reptile & Amphibian Forums

After reading Firesides article, I also looked at some other sights, and I believe in my own experience I have onbserved these behaviors in a few of my own horned lizards many many years ago, and although the article targets brearded dragons, it is clear from personal experience that again too big of prey causes or can cause the back legs to become unfunctional or have tremors and not beable to use the legs correctly. Recently within the last year we had several Fringe-toed Sand lizards who quit eating and began looking stright up in the air as if they were expecting someone to give them water, they all died, and each one seemed to contract this malidy from one of the contacts in the cage. While I have never seen this in Horned Lizards, it was found these lizards parasized (wild caught) and even though I spent a fair amont of money to try and save them, they were gone qickly......
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www.phrynosoma.org

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signature file edited. [phw 11/14/04]

If you had all your Fringe-Toed's in the same enclosure die, and they were all relatively the same size, or the prey size was large relative to all of them...then maybe they all got sick from prey size problems and developed ataxia...but it's kind of a long shot that this would happen in all of them like that.
It's possible that there was one that developed a problem due to prey, got infected with something communicable from stomach/intestinal inflammation ( like a viral or bacterial enteritis ), and it spread to the others. Maybe contributed to by lowered immune response, and heavy parasitation, due to captive stress.
It had to be an environmental factor common to them all though, or a communicable pathogen. The two solare I lost last year were under similar circumstances; and crickets, along with parasites, and captive stress related immune disfunction, might have actually been the cause.
I had success initially in the first case with acidified ( acedic acid ) water, and tetracycline ( per Montanucci's notes ), and stomach tube force feeding. The lizard had nearly recovered over a 2 week period, then died suddenly as soon as treatment was scaled back and she was off tube feeding. The second died a few days later.
In his maintenance and husbandry paper, Montanucci had offered a poor opinion of crickets as feeders and believed dirty crickets to be a possible cause for most cases of fatal gastroenteritis. The symptoms I noted were exactly the one's he laid out in his paper. Sounds much like the one's you noted too.
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"A man that should call everything by it's right name, would hardly pass the streets without being knocked down as a common enemy." The Complete Works of George Savile, First Marquess of Halifax 1912,246

I was just bringing out the point that Ihave observed this in my own animals over the years, actually the paratisized fringees according to the vet aslo may have had some other viral type influence in the demise, again for all to be affected, there was a communicable situation that caused this. Actually part of my suspicion now is that mixing wild caught groups for other locations is unadviseable I think that this was abig learnign expereince, I have a few others that are doing well and hibernating for the mont which I will bring up in March for breeding. I have been working hard on captive husbandry for these, like horned lizards small prey items are necessary, so in this case I was feeding these guys small wax wormsl, crickets, and bird seed, and trying greens as well, along with other insects and they seem to do well, and as Lester and I have both observed years ago that crickets can be contaminated and possible spread disease to our animals, I believe that prey size in this case did not sontribute to their demise.
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www.phrynosoma.org

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signature file edited. [phw 11/14/04]

Hey Repto,
I am sure your cricket experience is founded on good info. I'll tell you though, I've fed my hatchlings crickets almost every day now for 6 months and haven't had issues with them (nothing I've observed anyway).
My point is, I guess any food item could be contaminated and crickets are no exception. I still feel that they are good food and shouldn't be thrown out as a valuable food resource. Not that you implied that at all. Just throwing it out in the mix for consideration.
Cheers!
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www.phrynosoma.org

I have always given my HL's crickets - especially in winter when ants are not readily available - and have had no impaction/regurgitation/undigested cricket problems. I usually pull the rear legs off though and hand just put in 1 or 2 at a time and not overwhelm them. Also making sure to wash out the cricket keeper regularly and not reusing the egg crate material to reduce your chances of giving the lizards contaminted crickets is probably a good idea.

My specific incident had to do with the fact that both Lester and I lost HL's within a few days apart and we had both come to the conclusion we had purchased fdrom the same distributor, so I am not saying that cirketrs aren't a good food sourcel, sorry if anyopne gets that impression, but that in fact there have been several wriotings by diferent people over the years inside and out of HL'sville that have also pointed out that it is possible to get diseased crickets, So be sure you know your supplier and what kind of controls they have on their b reeding facility. Thats all. I still feed mine crickets as well....
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www.phrynosoma.org

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signature file edited. [phw 11/14/04]

"In his maintenance and husbandry paper, Montanucci had offered a poor opinion of crickets as feeders and believed dirty crickets to be a possible cause for most cases of fatal gastroenteritis."

This statement really interests me, is there a link to where I can get a copy of the paper?

Thanks,
Roger

I think I got a weblink to it saved on disk. If I can't find it I'll email you the PDF copy I have.
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"A man that should call everything by it's right name, would hardly pass the streets without being knocked down as a common enemy." The Complete Works of George Savile, First Marquess of Halifax 1912,246

can't find a web address for that, but if you pm me with your email I can send it to you.
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"A man that should call everything by it's right name, would hardly pass the streets without being knocked down as a common enemy." The Complete Works of George Savile, First Marquess of Halifax 1912,246

Mark beat you to the post! But thanks just the same. Lots of really good stuff in this one!

Roger

Not surprised. Hope you enjoy it.
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"A man that should call everything by it's right name, would hardly pass the streets without being knocked down as a common enemy." The Complete Works of George Savile, First Marquess of Halifax 1912,246