Please help!

[Tigergenesis]

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?

[kavmon]

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

[Shaun J]

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.

[Tigergenesis]

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?

[Tigergenesis]

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.

[kavmon]

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

vaughn

[led4urhead]

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

[Tigergenesis]

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.

[Schlyne]

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.)

[Tigergenesis]

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.