Minor Soft Jaw... and she wont eat fruit or veggies

MADHATTA84

Ok I have had my tegu (Isis) for just over 6 months. Her appetite is great. but when i got her she had some soft jaw.. I increased her calcium intake and it helped, but she still has soft jaw. what can i do to fix this problem?

My tegu also refuses to eat anything that isn't... a rat, mouse, turkey, fish, beef, chicken... I have offered her everything that i was told they eat. and she looks at it, licks it then walks away... any tips on how to get her to get her onto a more diverse diet.. or is all meat/fish or for her?

dpjm · Posted: Tue Oct 09, 2007 6:38 pm Post subject:

Not sure about the soft jaw. UVB? Bad calcium-phosphorus ratio?

I would say that a more diverse diet would be good. There are lots of vitamins etc that are in fruit, not meat, although whole foods (rodents) are healthier than just meat.

Try mixing fruit in with ground turkey, then try to form it into balls. Hopefully the tegu will eat the whole thing without realizing it isn't just turkey. If you can associate something they do like (turkey) with something they don't like (fruit) then maybe they'll start liking fruit by itself (or maybe they'll just stop liking turkey, in the case it backfires). I've even heard of people stuffing fruit into the gut cavity of rodents. Never tried that one but if nothing else works...

What kind of fruit have you tried?

chelvis · Posted: Tue Oct 09, 2007 9:05 pm Post subject:

for the soft jaw it would best to know what urlight system is like to better get an idea of your uva/uvb aborbtion. what kind of light how far from the lizard is it?

MADHATTA84 · Posted: Tue Oct 09, 2007 10:03 pm Post subject: ...

For lighting I have a reptiglow 2.0 and 5.0 both of which are 3' long. they are about 2 and a half feet away from the bottom of her cage.

chelvis · Posted: Tue Oct 09, 2007 11:41 pm Post subject:

the reptiglow are good bulbs but they lose their effectiveness after they are a foot or so away from the animal. try lower the light so that your tegu can get move uv exposer. If this doesn't work try natural sun light fr about two hours a day that really helped my rescued iggie a few years back. What really helped my tegu though was when i bought a mega ray active uv. They are expensive and i thought all the claims were just smoke and mirros but i saw a 100% improvement in my tegus color, appitie and alterness. This bulbs ae often used to help reptile with MBD. good luck with ur tegu!

VARNYARD · Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2007 12:17 am Post subject:

I don't like lights that are less then 8.0, but I would rather have 10.0 or the powersuns. As for the soft jaw, MBD is a very hard diseases on reptiles, many times the damage cannot be undone. However you can keep it from progressing. I have a couple of adult tegus that will not eat fruit, I have never had any problems with them such as health or shedding issues, bottom line, some tegus just don't like fruit.

MADHATTA84 · Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2007 7:24 am Post subject: thanks

I will improve the uv intake for my tegu.. When i got her the guy only had a basking light over her.. the soft jaw seems to get better with every shed. when i got her she was about 2foot head to tail now she is almost 3. and there is a noticeable difference

laurarfl · Posted: Wed Nov 07, 2007 2:52 pm Post subject:

Definitely try natural sunlight if you can...nothing beats it! I can't remember the exact study done (sorry Rick), but I believe it was 20-30 minutes of natural sunlight was equivalent to 8 hours of UVB exposure. Excuse the poor details, but I can't recall if this included the use of screen which filters out UV.

I hate to post incomplete data, but the point is that the real thing is so much better than anything we can create. Strip lights are great supplements, but if you have a case of MBD, natural gives the quickest response.

Good Luck!
_________________
Laura R (FL)
0.1.0 Colombian Tegu
0.2.0 Argentine B&W Tegu
1.0.0 Red Tegu
1.0.0 Green Amevia (yet another teiid)
8 other lizards
1 little gator
13 snakes
4 frogs
some bugs
and a partridge in a pear tree