Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My boyfriend just bought 4 female leopard geckos that came with a nice 40 breeder tank. The guy he got them from got them from a guy who stopped breeding them and subsequently stopped feeding them.

3 of them look alright, are active but thin and eat voraciously, but there's one that has us worried. You can see every bone in her body, she'll eat only occasionally when you really prod her to, and keeps her eyes closed most of the time. She'll walk around feebly, mostly just to shift positions around the cooler side of the cage. We hand feed the geckos so the fact that she's in with the others isn't a huge problem.

Does anyone have recommendations about getting her fattened up?
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Danne
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1.0 '07 BRB (Monroe)
1.0 '08 BRB 66% het Anery (Ace)
1.0 '08 Pastel BP (Sebastian)
1.0 Dumbo rats (Wilbur)
0.4 cats (Cupcake, Smokey, Thelma & Emelia)
1.2 family members who can't wait until I move "the zoo" into my own place!
1.0 supportive boyfriend
1.0 '08 neutered grey sugar glider (Acco)
0.1 '08 whiteface sugar glider (Malina)

Email = dshoback@eden.rutgers.edu

I recommend you keep this skinny one seperate and mist it often, as well as giving it a moist hide to go into to help revamp itself. You can try applying mixed fruit/turkey baby food against its lips to have it lick it off. That will perk it up a bit. Soaking in plain pedialite should help too.

Good luck.

Thanks, we tried both the pedialyte and the baby food today, unfortunately it was too late. Apparently she ate a few crickets hand-fed to her on her own the first day, but in her feces it seems as though she wasn't able to digest them too well. She died a few hours ago, but her sisters are all doing really well, actively hunting and catching crickets, so at least something good came out of having all of them.
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Danne
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1.0 '07 BRB (Monroe)
1.0 '08 BRB 66% het Anery (Ace)
1.0 '08 Pastel BP (Sebastian)
1.0 Dumbo rats (Wilbur)
0.4 cats (Cupcake, Smokey, Thelma & Emelia)
1.2 family members who can't wait until I move "the zoo" into my own place!
1.0 supportive boyfriend
1.0 '08 neutered grey sugar glider (Acco)
0.1 '08 whiteface sugar glider (Malina)

Email = dshoback@eden.rutgers.edu

Thanks for the ideas. I was actually about to post a very similar question. I wonder if we dealt with the same character when getting these leos...?

My fiance dealt with the negotiating end, I dealt with the physical trade & am very disappointed in the health of the leos we received. He claimed they were various morphs & we were supposed to receive a ration of 1.5. Though I'm not very practiced in Id-ing leo morphs, they are not what they should be and the ration is 3.3.

*sigh* Oh well. You win some, you lose some. Hopefully the baby food mixture will help perk the one up that looks just plain pitiful... Poor guy!
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Thanks!
Christina