Dragon Threw-up

[Pooka]

Hey Folks,
I posted this on the waterdragon mailing list to get some feedback but wanted to post it here for those of you who do not subscribe to that list.

Hey all,
For the past few weeks pooka has been on a worm kick. She has been putting
away on average 6-10 mealworms and 1-2 waxworms per day divided into in 2
seperate feedings. She has been on this diet religiously with only an
occasional cricket (which I think she eats on accident thinking its a waxworm).
Anyhow, yesterday I come home to find she has not eaten anything out of her bowl.
So I soaked her and made sure she was still drinking and after 7:00 took
away her dish and just chalked it up to wanting to skip a day of feeding as
nothing else seemed wrong. Well this morning I was getting ready for work and
noticed she was wakeing up in the "twighlight" so I sat down to watch her and
talk to her. Well when the lights kicked on she looked around for a bit and
did her regular lip smacking and a tiny yawn. A few minutes later she gaped
really wide and started squirming funny, I about had a heart attack not
knowing what was wrong. Then she shook her head and a little sac of somthing came
out of her mouth and she went back to normal, she must have been gagging it
up. Well when I took her out she was fine so I had her soak while I got into
the cage and got the sack, it was obviously throw-up. It was a ball of empty
meal worm shells and a 1/2 digested waxworm. This had to be from the day
before yesterday as she ate nothing yesterday. Any ideas whats going on here?
I checked my basking temps and they are 87 in one and 93 in the other. All
I can figure is changed is 2 things, 1 the lights come on about an hour
earlier as its getting lighter earlyier here and the timer is adjusted and her UV
lamp is about at its 6 month mark. Any thoughst would be appreciated, she
looks healthy and she is drinking could she just have had a 'bad' worm or
somthing?

Any thoughts?

[skjonnhet]

she could have had a bad worm or maybe the worm never digested correctly. I really don't know. I wish I could help you more.

[dragosmom]

I'm clueless (what else did you expect when you saw it was me) LOL. I have never seen it with one of mine but I have seen bits posted about reptile regurgitation (usually in snakes, though). If she goes back to normal eating patterns I wouldn't woryy about it, but you might want to cut back on the mealies until she can handle the chitin better, in case that was the problem. I have read several sources that recommend not feeding mealies until 6 mos. I did feed them to Drago with no problems (at least that I noticed). Might want to try some silkies or tiny supers (zoph morios). Hope everything is going to be all right!

[DaremoAlpha]

I fed Awol mealies right from hatchling...and I have never seen him do anything like this.

[bluedragon1587]

My dragon Saki did the same thing a few weeks ago. Right now he will eat no crickets, only worms. During one feeding he ate only the mealworms and didn't touch any of the waxworms...about an hour later he threw up. Since then I have lessened the amount of mealworms by half and added the waxworms. He hasn't thrown up since. I know that waxworms are fattening but since he is little and supposed to be growing anyway I'm just going to let him eat those with a small amount of mealworms until I get some silkworms or he starts eating crickets again. I hope this helps some......I posted this in the other forum too by the way

[Pooka]

*UPDATE*
Hey all, Thanks for the concern, advise and replies. I checked the food
items I offered Pooka yesterday and she had refused to eat again. All temps
were double checked and the viv inspected (no more throw-up at least). I have
set her up today with a variety of foods includeing wax worms, fresh molted
meals, and some small crickets to see if I can get her to put somthing down.
She is still drinking, soaking and using the bathroom so this is all good
news. I have set an appointment for tommorow morning with the vet just to be on
the safe side as this is rather deviant behavior for her. So my main concern
now is failure to feed. I cannot for the life of me figure out what is
causing this symptom, nothing really has chnaged in her enviroment other then her
daylight cycles are starting an hour earlier. Anyhow, just wanted to up
date the group and share pics of pooka I took yesterday, can anyone see anything
wrong with her? All I see is a healthy dragon... but I may be to close to
the situation, thanks all.

[dragosmom]

She's a great color, and I can see no area of concern. Maybe you are too darn observant for your own good! Let us know what the vet says.

[DaremoAlpha]

Yea I don't see anything but a healthy baby dragon

[Pooka]

Hi all,
Ok so I have put off updateing this thread for the whole weekend. I have
been super busy with doing a resume for work and kept putting it off but I
couldn't put it off anymore so here it is:
We took pooka to the vet saturday and met with him while he examined her.
He checked her for parastites, impaction and infection. That meant we had a
fecal done, manual palpataion (sp?), and she got a cloacla wash (lizard enema)
and she checked out fine. She has gone from 6 grams back in december to 26
grams by the end of february! Well we talked to the vet and he asked me a
few questions about her diet her behavior and her enclosure. We found the
problem while discussing diet.

Apparenly mixing waxworms and mealworms is a rough combination for smaller
dragons. T^he reason being that waxworms make the gut hypertensive, its like
heavy caffeine for us (everything kinda hurries and slides right through).
Well that mied with the heavy chitin armour of the mealwomrs makes them
commonly getr bunched at the top of the intestines, bottom of stomach area and
cause them dragon indigestion. Well that had happened to pooka and the wad of
worm stuffs rotted overnight thus she puked them up after a day.

What about the failure to feed I asked, he said this is akin to us avoiding
food after being food poisoned it takes a few days to have appetite back. He
to only offer her crickets, as they are much easier to digest, for about 2
weeks and to call him today if she stopped eating or drinking again at any
point. He also said pooka had great color, weight and all looked excellent with
her he was very pleased to see such a healthy lizard. Well later on
saturday she put away 4 crickets, sunday she put away 10. So she apparenlty feels
better. I will be monitoring her closely to be sure thats all that was going
on, just thought you should all know. Thanks for the support.

[dragosmom]

Kiley, what great news! Super information, also. You must have a really knowledgable vet which is good for all of us! LOL- YOU pay the big bucks for an exam and then pass the info along to all of us. I would love to have you describe the "wash" that was done. Did he use mineral oil? 10 crickets is a lot! Sounds like she's back to normal already.

[Pooka]

10 crickets is about 1/2 of what she used to eat when she ate crickets only and these guys were rather small but its better then no feeding at all

I didn't think to ask what was used in the wash although I observed it. I was under the belief it was just a sterile saline solution in a syringe that had a tiny little hose on the tip of it. He just slipped that in her vent and gave a little liquid then just used a slide to get some of the liquid that spilled out of her vent, that I assume wen under a micorscope then into a machine to spin it down for a cell count of some sort (to check antibodies I think). This test was used to rule out liver/renal failure I think. Don't quote me 100% on that but I think that was the jist, I didn't ask a ton of questions as this was the first time I have personally met our vet (the GF met him before)

[dragosmom]

Well, he was certainly thorough. You are VERY lucky to have one that appears to actually know more about your dragon than YOU do. Too many times, I read posts about people who take their dragon in and the vet days everything's fine and then a week later the dragon dies. I really like and trust my vet, but it sure doesn't hurt to try to know what the proper care is before you go into the vet-in case you get one with little or no actual experience.

[Pooka]

Yes I am very fortunate to have a great vet, he does all thw work for the reptiles exhbiits here at the desert mueseum also so he also appears to have a passion for reptile work.

Pooka is still doing well. In the mornings I catch her gagging a little bit but she is back on feed an still pooping. I am going to ask the vet about the gagging and see what he thinks, I am pretty sure he will tell me her belly is still a bit sour.

[dragosmom]

A lot of people use "probiotics" to keep the beneficial stomach bacterial in proper sync for those reptiles which tend to throw up a lot. I have been purchasing superworm and cricket gutload which has probiotics added to it. You can also purchase the probiotics itself at www.reptileuv.com if you are interested. So glad that she is feeling better and eating more.