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Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2005 3:07 pm Post subject: Shakey Tegu
Hey all, im just noticing that my tegu was shaking alot today. Like trembling. I dont know if thats normal or what, but it doesnt seem like it is. He just sits in the tank and has been shaking. If anyone can help me out thatd be great. thanks
Joined: Jul 09, 2005 Posts: 88 Location: Gilbert, AZ
Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2005 3:18 pm Post subject:
All 3 of me tegus have had this problem. They start twitching and shaking but it stops after like 5-10 minutes. Some people have said it is from a supplement problem, but I think it goes even further than that. Mine have only done it once since I have had them so I am thinking it is from sort of stress related issue. Spray your tegu down with water if the problem continues. This may help.
Katie _________________ 1.1 Veiled Chameleons
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Tremors are abnormal, whether occasional or in a longer period like this one. Lots of things cause tremors, both neurological causes, dietary, toxicoses, etc. Take it to a vet. Since reptiles commonly have deficiencies in Vit. D3/Ca++ metabolism leading to fibrous osteodystrophy, it would be pretty cheap to get blood calcium levels run to help indicate if your problem is husbandry or something a little more sinister, like a neurological disorder. I've never really met a lizard that shook from stress - tail whiping, biting, hiding, or even going kinda rigid and shutting their eyes, but not tremors.
Joined: Jul 23, 2005 Posts: 385 Location: North Carolina
Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 7:23 am Post subject:
my tegu would do this slight twitching thing in his rear legs, almost as soon as he was hatched. I dismissed it as blood flowing through his little legs, because that is what it looked like.. Kind of like when something gets your adrenaline flowing and your heart thumps really hard...
Well... now my tegu can hardly use his front legs, as he seems to be partially paralyzed.. Nor i, or the vet could figure out what was wrong, but maybe you will have better luck, being that you can catch it early. _________________ The Jay
Well, yes and no. You can always feed them whatever you can get them to eat, but that isn't necessarily good. Since Vit. D3 is used in calcium synthesis, some supplementation may be benificial in addition to a good UVB source and/or sunlight. However, D3 is a fat soluble vitamin... this means it accumulates in body fat and can become toxic even with a low daily dose, unlike B or C vitamins, which just get excreted in urine.
Overdosing on D3 can lead to all sorts of health problems, but the most common is metastatic calcification, particularly in blood vessels. One of the favourite cases to show around the school is an iguana fed nothing but cat food - aside from the protein levels, the vitamin levels were too high, and you could take the iguana's calcified aorta out on post mortem and snap it in your hands like a brittle twig. It also had trouble with other fat soluble vitamins like A.
Likewise, calcium supplementation isn't really useful. You have 3 pools of calcium in your body, a big one that's largely unavailable in bone, a smaller one inside cells, and a very small pool of extracellular calcium, only a fraction of which is ionised. That tiny calcium ion pool is what's affecting nervous conduction, neuromuscular junctions and muscle contraction, but supplementing with oral calcium (with or without D3 added) is not necessarily going to raise that free ionised fraction if there is pathology in the hormonal regulation, which is typically the cause of what's kinda incorrectly called metabolic bone disease.
Bottom line, I think it's far cheaper and easier to spend $30 to get a blood calcium ion level run. It's going to be cheaper as a diagnostic aid NOW that it will be in a year when this problem is much worse and could've been prevented with proper treatment. It's your animal and you can obviously decide whether or not to do this, but if you wait until symptoms get to a point where a vet can't alleviate them, it's not necessarily a lack of skill and knowledge on the part of your vet that your pet could be crippled or have a compromised life span.
well what im gonna do is, if he i see him do this again, then ill def. bring him into a vet ASAP. What do they do just take some blood from the lil guy or? do they have to keep him overnite?
They'll probably do a physical and then take blood... they don't generally need to be there overnight. It depends how your vet is set up... we didn't have inhouse facilities at the clinics I've worked at, so we had blood samples done right at 8am so we could have results back for afternoon appts (i.e. you had to come by twice). At school, since the vet college has everything in house, we just mosey off and run it in the clin path lab.
It's actually better to take the tegu now - there's a whole range of disease that's at the subclinical level (i.e. you don't really see signs, but it predisposes the animal to more severe disease or other concurrent problems) and it's best to nip it in the bud if you can.
Alright, I woke up this morning and he was shaking again, and hes got me really really worried, so I called up the Herp vet over in Newburgh and they are squeezing me in at 2:30. So lets hope all goes well and it doesnt reach to far down into my pocket. The inital visit is $48 bucks so. If they have to run tests, lets hope the total is under $100. But I hope mario is ok. Ill let you all know what happends. Thanks again for the help!
Ok, I just got back from the Herp and he said it was a calcium deficiancy. He asked me what I was feeding him and I told him crickets, fruit, and pinkies. He told me the only thing good I was feeding him was the pinkies. He said to stop feeding him fruit and crickets. He said on occasionaly if I wanna feed him crickets thats ok. But Pinkie mice and Pinkie rats have the calcium and vitamins that he needs. So basically he gave me some calcium to give him in a syringe 4 times a day. A quater each dose. So lets hope he gets better soon!
oh and by the way, the vet told me that he was pretty sure Mario was a female. He said itd be easier for him to tell when it gets bigger. He didnt probe it. So for now im still gonna call it Mario. Just wanted to let everyone know. Thanks again
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