Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Forest is now in his second breeding season that started on the 8 of March and he is 2 years 4 months.

This boy does not only leave white marks everywhere but actually mates with his teddy and towel. Last week wednesday I found him full of blood when I got home. I bathed him and did not find any wounds but found my bed and his teddy full of blood. Thursday when we got home his towel, my carpet and he were full of blood again. Friday the same. I am talking about A LOT of blood! (Will take a photo tonight and post it.)

I took him to his vet on Friday, he was totally shocked about the amount of blood. He took earbuds and inserted into his vent but all of them came out clean. Luckily the bleeding stops every time that he retracts his hemipenis. Forest is completely pale inside his mouth which indicates that he did loose lots of blood. According to the vet his hemipenis is EXTREMELY big, but forest is big for his age.

Only advice the vet gave me was to spray supplements = iron, magnesium into his mouth. To leave all the toys otherwise he will just find something else to mate with and to take photos. There are no such supplements for iguanas, there is only calcium and more calcium available.

I wasnt happy with his advice so I went to another vet who said that I must take forest out of his room and keep him in a bathroom with nothing so he can stop mating.

I am not happy with this advice either because it is bad enough that forest only eats 1-5 bites of food since the beginning of March and by putting him in a bathroom will only result in stress and no food intake.

I also phoned Onderstepoort where all SA vets right there final exams and nobody had a solution either, they can only help with a prolapse.

Forest needs to eat, he needs to be at the ultimate humidity and heat so that he can heal himself by absorbing all the nutrition that he stored before the breeding started. Correct? I am not talking about healing his hemipenis, I am talking about replacing the blood loss.

So what I've done this weekend was I took ALL toys away and I covered his tree stumps with bright colour duvets so that he cannot scrape himself if he maybe decides to mate with it. I also increased the humidity and the heat. He IS NOT HAPPY - jungle, his soft green toy means the world to him! He was aggressive this weekend BUT he stayed on his pillow under the increased heat and he ate at least a cup of food.

He was still pale inside his mouth last night and his eyes also look pale but he is very alert. I saw his hemipenis this morning, also a pale colour and it is definitely the left one that is hurt because the the line that he left was red on the one side and white on the other.

Do you think I can crush a little bit of human iron pills and spray that in his mouth? It is better than nothing right?

Any other advice? I know what to do when he has a prolapse but that is not the problem.

I hope I find nothing when I get home!

(Both the vets have not seen anything like this before plus I've been surging the web since Thursday and I cant find anything so severe.)

My boy means more than the world to me and I will stop at nothing to make him super healthy again. Please help me think of solutions.

Hi, first of I feal very simpathetic to your boy and your wish to make him recover, however I think your taking the wrong aproach to deal with it. First of you need to give your iguana´s body the oportunity both to rest and heal but by that I dont mean increasing the temperature, actualy I mean decreasing it! first he will become less active, he´s mating desires will slowen and he can have some rest. But of course I dont mean putting him out of its normal temp range, put him at a fairly constant 26C which is a very confy temp for igs to rest for a few days, that wont interfere with its healing or new blood production. Also you can and should decrease the photoperiod, actually when you see he is too much agitated you can temporarily put him in darkness which will calm him down. That wont hurt him, remenbar wild igs can easily survive tropical monsoons in a inactive state. Now you need to give him lots of fluids and food and you can do both by feeding him by hand the normal food he eats completly grounded up. As he is being kept cooler only feed a bit at a time, when he is calmer and back into basking give him as much food as he wants. Dont give him iron suplements, but you can give him things such as centrum wihich will help him recover.

Decreasing the photoperiod sounds like a good idea, but I would keep temps in the normal range...just my opinion because I would worry about infection setting in or low metabolism preventing healing. I wouldn't overdo it on the vitamins and minerals. He is going to need B as well as iron to treat the anemia.

Have you considered contacting either Melissa Kaplan at her website www.anapsid.org or Douglas Mader, DVM at Marathon Veterinary Hospital Tel: (305) 743-7099. Tel: (800) 832-7694. Maybe your vet can make a connection for a reference. He is a highly reputable reptile vet and has quite a bit of experience with iguanas.