Please help!

My crested has been inactive, not eating much and hiding lately and I suspected shedding. Yesterday when I came home I peeked in her hide and noticed that she was shedding. Today when I came home she's moved out of her hide and still has some shed on the top of her head and her feet. But I'm upset to see something which scares me - I noticed her mouth was staying open and when I got a better look I realized her bottom jaw was hanging down! I'm really scared and don't know what to do or what's going on. She's having a hard time walking with the shed.

Please, what do i do?

hey tiger, i know your husbandry is good so it might be something genetic. i had this happen to one of my first female breeders, she stopped eating and became lethargic. it just got worse from there and she passed away a couple weeks later. sorry to make things sad. if it happens again i will go to a vet at once this time. dr. scott stahl keeps rhacs and might be able to do something. he is located in northern,va but a phone call might be helpful.

hope everything works out for the best

thanks
vaughn

all i can say is rub her head with a wet q-tip.that should get shed off.it helped with my snake.its worth a try.

Okay, well I got her moist and was able to get most (if not all) of her shed off her tail, legs/feet (got one more to get) and I think all of her head. I was hoping maybe the shedding skin was so tight that it was pulling her jaw down, but it doesn't seem like it. It's a bit hard to tell how much of the shedding skin I've removed since she's a bit wet. She was actually tangled up in her shed - there were long strands connecting pairs of feet. I don't understand how she could have had a bad shed, but the main problem seems to be that she got tangled up.

I don't know what to do about her bottom jaw. I can gently move the jaw back up and she doesn't react (she barked a couple of times while I was removing shed from her feet). I've been letting water trickle off of my finger into her mouth for her to drink. What could this be? What do I do?

I never really handle her, she's usually so scared and may only occasionally accidentally jump on my hand and then quickly jumps off when she realizes she's touching a human. I mainly just watch and observe her. For the most part she let me handle her no problem (which scares me because it's not normal for her). She's so tiny.

Any advice or thoughts would be greatly appreciated. I'm going to go and try to get that last foot clear of shed. I'm so upset and scared I'm at a loss about her mouth. Do I need to take her to a vet (could they even do anything)? How will she eat?

I feel so horrible. I thought I'd let her relax a bit more while I cleaned her cage and changed substrate, and when I went to go get her to work on her last foot she had passed. I'm at such a loss.

sorry tiger, i know how you feel. it is hard to swallow when you know you did/do everything by the book!

vaughn

I'm sorry to hear that Tigergenesis :(. I'm know you did everything you could.

Thank you both! It just sucks since I don't know what happened or if I could have done something differently. It was also a surprise. While she wasn't jumping all over the place while I was removing her shed, she was moving about, barked a couple of times, drank water dripping from my finger...I certainly did not expect her to pass. She was so tiny and I was so nervous buying such a young baby. I was always so scared to hurt her. My boyfriend buried her in the back yard for me (which is very sweet because it is pouring down raining right now). Tonight was the first time I ever got to hold her. :(

My sympathies. Could she have fallen and hurt her jaw somehow? I have no other ideas for how she could have ended up with her jaw like that, other than swallowing substrate or something (which I'll bet she didn't do.)

She hadn't been eating and hadn't been coming out much - which I attributed to her shedding. I'm pretty sure her jaw was not like that last night or this morning. I too thought perhaps she injured it. I just pulled out my Rhac book by Philippe de Vosjoli, and if she didn't injure it MBD sounds possible. He says it can be rapid - almost overnight and that the lower jaw is one area that is usually affected. If it was MBD that makes me even more mad, because it's not like I deprived her of food. I fed her baby food with Gargoyle diet mixed in. I tried crickets, but she didn't show much interest. She did eat a tiny waxworm once. But I know they can live solely on the Crested Gecko diet so I'm trying not to beat myself up about the diet. She never really ate a lot, but I figured that was normal for such a tiny baby with a tiny tummy. She was without a doubt the cutest thing I'd ever seen. I'm glad I got to finally hold her before she passed.

I feel your pain Tiger. I am very sorry for your loss. At least she had a wonderful keeper and a comfortable, well cared for life while she was with us.

TG, I am sorry I didn't see this last night. It does sound like MBD. The gargoyle and crestie diets are carefully formulated to be balanced for the geckos, and if you add anything other than water on a regular basis, they need either some calcium and herp vitamins added back in to the food or added on bugs that they'll eat. I'm going to check the crestie caresheet to make sure that is clear for other keepers. I feel like I failed you and your crestie.

I know you tried to take very good care of her, and if her appetite were bigger, the nutritional balance might have made less difference because she'd still have been getting enough. Eating just the minimum, though, it becomes even more important that the protein and calcium get packed in there. I am very sorry for your loss and I hope you won't give up on cresties.

Hey condolences TG, as mentioend above it might well have been something congenital or a condition pre-existing and certainly not a reflection on your care and efforts. I am terrified to get into geckos as I am sure I would not be able to keep up with them.

Thank you Marla. Please don't feel that you failed me. You were nothing but a huge help. Besides, I had heard from others that they feed baeby food with the diet or that it was okay to do thise w/o any mention of having to offset things with calcium, supplements, etc. That's not even made clear on the bottle or in the books I have as to the need to offset such a chnage when adding the diet to anything but water. I too think that because she didn't have a bigger appettite (or seem to care for crickets) that made it more difficult. She was also very young when I got her (maybe too young for the breeder to have sold her to me?) - she was only 2 weeks old when I bbrought her home. She had just turned 3 months old on the 8th.

I will not give up on Cresteds. I will, however, be sure I buy an older one, handle it to make sure it's not too stressed and will likely get a different color/pattern so as to not remind me of "lil Bit' too much. I think I might try to get one from Robbie Hamper. Besides, I had just spent close to $200 on a custom made cage and supplies for her. It was too big for her current size, but I was going to take some time growing live plants and getting it all fixed up for when she was bigger.

Thanks again Smulkin!

Generally the breeders will hold on to them for the first month or so to make sure they're well-started, so that may have been part of the problem with this one. It is surprising that she didn't like crickets, as all of mine love to hunt, but I guess every species can have a picky eater come along. It sounds like she was going to be absolutely spoiled if she had made it, and I'm sure your next one will thrive now that you have experienced about the worst that can happen with them. An older one would definitely be a better choice, and I can certainly understand your wanting to get one that looks different. I hope the changes I've made to the caresheet make it clear to readers now what the dangers are of not balancing changes in the diet so maybe we can prevent its happening to another gecko. If all goes well, I should have a couple of cresties that could be re-homed around the first of the year (they should hatch around Thansgiving or a little after). I want to keep one, but I'd be delighted to re-home the other with you if you wanted.

Thank you Marla - as always. If I haven't gotten a new one by then I will certainly keep you in mind. :)

Glad to be able to help at least a little. :)

tiger sorry to hear of the loss , 2 weeks is way to young Imo for the breeder to have let the animal go. Its a pretty big learning experience to get the hang of starting these little guys out . I started out trying to use the CG diet and had a couple failures with my first few babies and quickly switched back to the tried and tested crickets baby food and a healthy helping of calcium,they seem to need a good bit of calcium from hatching till about 4 months old. I think I would stick to that feeding regiment unless you have a very well started crestie that has been started on the CG diet by the breeder
Btw there are also several reports from some breeders around that have experienced a complete halt or extreme reduction in egg production when switching to the diets indicateing possibly not enough protein in the diet and possibly calcium aswell. there is no telling what industry does to a good thing once they get ahold of the rights to it

May I ask what everyone else's feeding routine is for their cresteds?

I feed fresh hatched babies daily , both insects and fruit, they tend to start better on peaches and apricots for me I dust the insects daily until they are about 4 months old then I start feeding on an alternateing days bugs one day fruit the next, dusting with calcium every time on the bugs and once a week on the fruit

Mine get crickets once or twice a week depending on availability, and gargoyle gecko diet any day that they miss out on crickets. I dust the crickets with calcium about 2/3rds of the time and herp vitamins other times. I feed CGD generally 4 days a week and add a small amount of baby food for flavor about half the time, but they willingly eat it plain after being trained to it. Every now and again (every two weeks or so), I'll give a little bit of plain fruit or a different kind of bug as a treat.

I don't have babies yet, but when Scooby and Waldo were still little (the others came to me big), I fed them every day with crickets 2-3 times a week and alternating between CGD and GGD with a little fruit mixed in the other days. My routine has changed a little from time to time, but it's never been significantly different from this.

man this has happend to my first herp my baby iggy he was a gint green iguana i miss himi feel your loss

adults get crickets 3-4 times weekly, babyfood 1-2 times weekly

babies get crested diet daily mixed with a little babyfood and vitamins/calcium
when the babies are big enough around a month or so i give them pinheads daily dusted with calcium/herpvite

adults get babyfood by hand, i think this gets them use to us more and gives us time to hold them.