Leo with MBD - will not eat

Hello,

One of my leos (male, 3 months old, 24g) was diagnosed with MBD by the Vet. He is on calcium supplements, given by mouth. Due to the MBD his legs are weak, and he will not eat his normal diet (crickets, mealworms, occasional waxworm). The X Ray showed that he is highly deficient in bone.

How do I get him to eat, and what do I feed him?

Your help would be greatly appreciated.

Mike

only way to force feed an animal like this is to tube feed... some how you need to find supplies for this, or improvise.

a couple of suggestions...

1. go back to the vet and ask them help you, see if they can teach you to care for the animal and also give you supplies to do so.

2. buy the supplies yourself and learn while you go...

you may be able to just use a syringe and cathater to give the liquefied food. only thing though is if the MBD is so bad... opening the mouth manually could injure the animal severely... so a surgically inserted tube may be need.

check this link and see if it helps...

http://www.anapsid.org/signs2.html

good luck... hope this helps!

Thanks, Murph.

I will take him back to the Vet this morning and see what he can suggest or do.

Cheers,

Mike

You should visit the Leo forum. Tube feeding is a drastic step...not one to take lightly at all. The vet can give the leo a calcium injection to get calcium into it's system immediately. Beyond that, there is a slurry you can make to get your gecko to feed. You just dab a bit on the end of the nose at a time (avoid covering nostrils), and the gecko will willingly lick it off. Once it gets a bit stronger, you can try offering it something active and soft (like a freshly molted cricket, roach, superworm, etc.).

http://www.usageckos.com/info_tipstricks.html#slurry

This slurry has seriously saved countless geckos.

yes, obviously tube feedingis a last resort.

but if an animal doesnt have enough energy to swallow its own food, let alone lap food off the tip of its nose... then it is life saving.

Thanks for all the advice. Sadly my gecko died yesterday. I did manage to get some food and water into him but he was too weak to swallow properly. I have a jpeg of the XRay that the Vet took of him. There was virtually no bone matter left in him. The Vet said that this had been a problem from birth or even earlier, if the mother had not been getting enough calcium. Would it be worth posting a picture of the XRay to help other people?

Mike

yes, please post a pic here and in the leo forum... i think we could all learn something.

sorry to hear that it passed on.

thanks for sharing.

~Brian w.

Here is the XRay photo from the Vet. As you can see there is virtually no bone left in the animal, and all this occurred within the space of two weeks. Needless to say I have checked my other 9 leos very carefully, and they are all fine. The Vet semed to think that the condition could have been present before birth; i.e. the mother leo had a low calcium level and thsi was pased on.

I hope this is of some use to you.

Mike

thanks mike for taking the time to post this... its very appreciated.