Originally Posted by
tupinambis
This year is particularly abnormal with the animals. Don't know about where everyone else is, but where I live we had a very long, protracted and cold spring and then "snap" went into a short heat wave. I kid you not, from -5C to 35C+ in 2 days. It has really had an impact on the local animals, we saw wood frogs breeding in June, others later, which is really really late. This weird weather seems to have impacted right into the following fall and we're seeing tegus demonstrating strong hibernation behaviour earlier in the season. Goes to show that, if you remember years and years ago when I used to frequently battle with a particular individual on the physiology of tegus, that like I claimed hibernation was not fully regulated by photoperiod alone (otherwise we should see much more regular behaviour on when tegus enter and leave hibernation). I too am already experiencing hibernation behaviour and my guys are in basements with next to no input from natural photoperiod. Also, if you haven't seen my prior posts on the hibernation phenomenon, the fact is that, at least physiologically, tegus are really only fully active 3-4 months of the year, the rest of the year they are ramping down their metabolism and preparing for hibernation or in hibernation. Now I've heard of tegus hibernating with food in their guts, and I've also seen tegus die supposedly from food spoiling in their guts while hibernating. There can be a few reasons for this discrepancy, but I don't think it's necessary to go into them. My own stance is you want to try to avoid having meat in the gut during hibernation, I've just seen too many things go wrong with this. There are a number of practices you can take to try promoting bowel movement and clearing the GI tract. Keep ALL temperatures up (not just warm baths, but keep them warm when sleeping as well) - proper body temperature will promote the digestive system to function. In the last meals before hibernation, I tend to increase the amount of vegetative matter in the food they eat, this promotes rapid passage through the gut. Keep them well hydrated and it probably doesn't hurt to make sure they are getting their electrolytes. With tegus that you're concerned with passing that last meal, you can give them oral doses of mineral oil and water with fiber supplement added to it to aid as a laxative and clear out the GI tract well.
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