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BigLou69
09-20-2005, 08:07 PM
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

K8t
09-20-2005, 08:18 PM
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

alex
09-21-2005, 02:28 AM
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.

Diegar
09-21-2005, 12:23 PM
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.

BigLou69
09-22-2005, 02:32 AM
hey all, he hasnt done it at all anymore since that day. is there any way i could give him some type of vitamins or something? thanks

alex
09-22-2005, 03:10 AM
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.

BigLou69
09-22-2005, 04:08 AM
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?

alex
09-22-2005, 10:45 PM
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.

BigLou69
09-23-2005, 01:05 AM
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!

K8t
09-23-2005, 01:22 AM
I hope everything goes well. Poor thing :(

Teiidae
09-23-2005, 01:28 AM
I hope this goes well for you guys - Keep us updated ...

Diegar
09-23-2005, 02:04 PM
Since this is sounding so familiar, i need to ask, where did you get your tegu?

BigLou69
09-23-2005, 04:06 PM
I picked him up at a Reptile show in White Plains.

BigLou69
09-23-2005, 08:02 PM
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!

BigLou69
09-23-2005, 08:04 PM
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

tupinambis
09-26-2005, 06:28 PM
Not to be confrontationist, but sounds like your vet has limited herp experience. First, many vets make the claim that pinkies are a good source of calcium and vitamins, without checking that MOST studies counter that claim. Pinkies haven't yet mineralized their skeleton, and most of the calcium and vitamin content in them comes from their stomach contents - milk. Beings as reptiles are lactose intolerant, this isn't really a good source of these nutrients. It is far better to offer your tegu older rodents. Cut them up if you have to.
Second, most veterinary manuals equate tegus with monitors, hence their view that fruits are a hindrance. As we all know, wild tegus are omnivorous, and actually eat a fair amount of fruit. However, most keepers don't read these articles, and interpret "fair amount" to mean a lot more than it should. It would be my advice to avoid giving more than 20-30% of their diet in fruit.
Lastly, I'm a little surprised if your vet didn't recommend making sure your tegu has ample exposure to UVB radiation, or at least recommended supplementation with pro/vit D3. You can give your tegu all the calcium in the world, but without it also having vit D3, it isn't going to amount to much. Vit D3 is an integral component to calcium metabolism.
However, definitely keep using the oral calcium supplement. It is usually the best thing to give them.

drfish
09-26-2005, 07:00 PM
I was going to say about the pinkies, but I think Tup (excuse the abbreviation) has pretty well summed it up.

I'd recommend finding a new herp vet really.

BigLou69
09-27-2005, 01:14 AM
yeh he also said that tegus and snakes dont need UV light. I was just like yeah ok. But of course im still using it. The only thing im having trouble with is getting him to take the calcium from the syringe, like he doesnt wanna lick it. I dont know why. But yeah im still gonna feed him crickets, turkey and fruit, as well as rodents. He ate 2 pinkie rats today and seems to like them. I havent seen any of the shaking latley so, lets hope hes gettin better. I love this little guy. Im prolly just gonna stay with this herp vet. Hes only like 10-15 minutes away from me tops, cause i live in fishkill, so I went to the one in Newburgh. But ill keep listening to you guys, cause aboviusly all of you guys have ahd alot of expierence, and as for the vet, well i dont know about him. I guess you could say he thought he was a "know it all" but anyways thanks alot guys, and if anybody can give me any suggestions on how to get him to take these drops, thatd help out ALOT too. Thanks

alex
09-27-2005, 02:45 AM
Snakes don't need UVB light, that much is true. I've had well over a hundred snakes pass through my hands since I was 10 one way or another, and I've never had a hypovitaminosis D or skeletal problem that wasn't related to trauma.

Anyway, Colin already said it about calcium & neonate rodents, but if you have a big bag of pinks already, just powder them with a little calcium - if it has D3 in it use it more sparingly, or get some human tablets and crush them (I have some I bought for me that are disgusting, chalky and hard to swallow and so I tend to powder them for the herps & bird)

Another thing you can do is ensure that the greens and fruit you are feeding have a positive Ca:P ratio, if ever in doubt look up the nutritional data on:
http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/search/

If you have trouble using the oral Ca supplement, there's a few things you can do. 1) What flavour is it and what concentration of Ca is in there? You can switch around, drug stores usually sell a few different flavours and the veterinary stuff, at least in Canada, is much higher in Ca++ and banana flavoured. You may have to give more of a less concentrated solution if you can find an appetising flavour. 2) Don't expect him to lick it. Crack his mouth open, slide the syringe in past the back of his tongue (since the trachea is immediately adjacent to the tongue, if you're at the back of his throat you're in the esophagus) and squirt it back there. I don't know how many ml's you're giving per dose, but you may have to break it up (i.e. instead of 1 5ml bolus, give 5 1 ml boluses). This is much easier in some ways, but involves actually being able to safely restrain your tegu and open its mouth. 3)If it eats pink mice whole (i.e. doesn't rip them up or chew too much) inject the liquid supplement into the pink (or into 2 or 3, again, depending on dose). I don't know if you have clean needles & syringes around, but either ask your vet for them or ask at a human pharmacy. I've found Walmart to be quite good about giving me needles when I say they're for pets (I don't know why, but they are. You could probably just use something like 25 or 23 G needles on whatever syringe you have and use that to inject, but even an insulin syringe might work, but then you have to realise that a human insulin syringe is 30 units per 1 cc/ml or a caninsulin syringe is 40 units per 1ml/cc). I stick everything that is humanly possible in my prekilled mice for my snakes and the raptors.

Finally, if you still can't get it in him, either insist the vet run serum calcium and give him injectable (the reason you want to know this is boluses of Ca++ can be quite cardiotoxic so you need to be right, although SQ administration does slow this down a bit) or else ask for a red rubber feeding tube. Again, lube it with edible oil or eggwhite, slide it to the back of the throat and down to the length the vet tells you, and squirt it down gently and then gently flush with an equal volume of water.