Potential health threat with ground meat diets

alex · Valued Member Joined: Aug 03, 2005 Posts: 106

You can't look at an obstruction in the colon and assume that white = calcium. It's highly unlikely with the diets your animals are on that calcium is aggregating in the colon - calcium is mostly excreted through the kidneys. It's far more likely that that's urates than anything else.
However, IT'S A NONSPECIFIC SIGN that likely just indicates colon necrosis!
It's indicative of everything from parasites to viruses to bacterial infections, including sepsis. Sad to say, but simply looking at a gross necropsy really tells you shit all unless it's really really grossly obvious - i.e. the lungworms are crawling out the trachea, there's a penetrating wound with intestines hanging out, etc. In fact, there's very little reason to assume that the colonic mass is necessarily why the animal died unless histological samples are taken of many organs, not just that area with the mass. Freezing unfortunately causes a lot of changes that can really obscure any pathology in the tissues. Unless you know how to prepare, mount and if necessary stain tissue slides, as well as how to conduct a proper necropsy without contaminating everything, it'd be worth it to pay to get a professional necropsy done at a private lab if you truly want to find out what killed your animal.
That aside, it's likely that any captive diet is something of a sub-optimal one for any pet animal. While pet cats and dogs would likely have a much higher rate of nutritional disease without commercial diets, even high quality ones can contribute to a whole other series of health problems.

drfish · Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 6:32 am Post subject:

Good quality advice there Alex.

russ1066 · Member Joined: Dec 10, 2004 Posts: 21

I feed , rodents ,fruit, and kingworms . Thats it . Santiago is bretty big for a tegu.Take care russ