Olivia

Hows that blizzard you rescued from petco doing? still alive? im not sure if you posted an update, if you did maybe i missed it, lol

Yup, she's still alive. It's been slow progress for her. I've never had to force feed her because she's ready and willing to eat on her own. She's gained a tiny bit of weight and is fairly active.

She threw up for the first time a couple days ago, and I'm still trying to figure out why. I've held off on feeding her since then. Yesterday when I went to check on her, she had retained shed on her back legs and tail. I was able to get it off her tail without too much difficulty, but man! Working the skin off those little toes is hard! These are the first time difficulties I've run into though with her.

I did a fecal smear and found a pinworm egg and a few of what look like hookworm larvae but were kind of mangled. That doesn't surprise me, since I suspected as much. I'm sure there's other stuff in there that I missed so I'll keep checking. I suspect what caused her condition was an impaction. I don't know what else would keep a baby blizzard from eating. Her first stools had sand in them. She had to defecate a few times before it looked like she got it all out of her system.

By the way, this wasn't a Petco rescue. I bought her from a locally owned petsore that breeds their own reptiles. I did find the owner's e-mail address because it was listed on a herp show vendor list. When I asked, he confirmed that he was the owner. There was no response though after I explained the situation with links to pictures.

im glad she's showing some progress

your doing a great job with her, i really hope she pulls through for you

i have a question about hookworm larvae..i went over to a friends house earlier today, he keeps leos also but doesnt breed them..one of his jungles defecated, and in thefeces there where small larvae, they looked like cricket larvae, i used to breed my own crickets, they where identical, he also feeds crickets and had some really fat female crickets in with his other adults, the jungle defecated again about 2 hours later and it was completely normal which leads me to belive what i saw where undigested cricket larvae, i told him to get a fecal done anyways, better safe than sorry

have any updated pics of the blizzard?

I don't think they actually poop out hookworm larvae. They poop out the eggs that don't take long at all to hatch. As far as I know, none of the larval stages are visible to the naked eye. The adults are though, but when you find them in stools they're usually dead.

I don't have any updated pictures yet, but I'll try to take some soon.