I personally would not bring this guy into the beardie room. Unfortunately eye infections are a common side symptom to other disease. It very well could be harmless and uncontagious, but the point of quarantine is to observe an animal for a quantity of time disease free. The longer the time, the less of a chance that the animal is diseased. If they cannot hold that status then the risks are high.

Sonya brings up a very good point, and this is the quality of the quarantine period. Not that this pertains to you particular, but there is a big difference between an animal looking healthy and being checked on once a week, and an animal looking healthy and being checked daily. Further, there is a big difference between an animal that looks healthy from a distance, to one that is regularly examined with diagnostic tests backing up a disease free status. On that note however, we are talking about reptiles. There are more diseases unknown than known, and even less tests that can be run antemortem. So for now, I'd say that the more tests done, the less the risk; just as with increased time. Practically however, this is usually limited to a pair of fecals. This might include a culture of the eye discharge you are seeing, however recall the limited use of such cultures; the results are likely to contain a million and a half species of bacteria and it's only a best guess as to which one is pathogenic, if any.



Yes, there will always be some risks with healthy looking animals, but they are much, much lower. Further, asymptomatic animals "usually" are not shedding virus' or other pathogens (or at least in high quantities); thus the need to remove any animal back into quarantine should it ever get sick.



I do agree that husbandry correction is your best direction towards helping this dragon. I would do all that I could to try to troubleshoot this while keeping it outside of my herp room. Doing as you say, bringing it into your dragon room, on the other side, handling him last ect is the next best; but a distant second IMO.



Good luck,



Ian



ps, are there other rescues, herp societies etc that you are able to direct some of these incoming animals too? It's no fun being so spent-out on something that is essentially volunteerism. Are you able to accept donations/ fundraise for treatments and equipment? I know the IRS down there is much different than our Canadian counterpart up here.

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