Pirate has passed. :(

Today I lost my favorite and most beautiful beardie, ever....Pi Pi. I had her for 7.5 years. She recently became deathly ill after eating a PRE-KILLED MOUSE. I spent over $1,200.00 in vet bills in the past 6 days. Everything from blood tests, ultra-sounds, x-rays and issue samples. I had to get a second (fast-food working) job to pay off the bills. She became extremely lethargic and her beard became black. She stopped eating and drinking. After two days, I took her to the vet. After all the tests it was determined that her cause of illness was either a tiny bone fragment (from the mouse) her in small intestine, or toxicity from the mouse...I am still awaiting the results of more tests. The vet gave her some vitamin B and some Baytril. She ate (forcefully) AD for two days and then began defacating blood....at first just a little and then A LOT. I took her BACK to the vet.....MORE tests. She was otherwise extremely healthy and happy and the first beardie I ever owned....and the one who got me hooked on them. She was a leucistic x snow from Dragons Den stock. I truly loved her and I will miss her dearly. If anyone out there knows of this sort of thing happening to a beardie...or has had similar experiences....let me know. I am an experienced herper, and I have only bought my feeders through a reptuable source, the same one for three years...with no problems....also....if this turns out to be related to the mouse.....can I get upset and sideways at the mouse breeders? .

What size mouse did you feed her? And if the mouse was sick, and caused the her to die, you have a reason to be upset, if it was from a bone fragment, well, then no, not really.

Let us know the results of the vet autopsy.

The mouse was a very small sub-adult-sized....not quite full-grown. I have ordered and fed the same size for years. I am taking her into the vet this morning for the necropsy.

Thing here is...

It was YOUR choice to feed the item to the animal, the individual or company who produced the mouse did not come to your home, open your animal's enclosure and then shove this mouse into your animal's mouth.

If there was some physical problem with the digestion of the prey item, that lies entirely on your shoulders as you are the one who decided to utilize the item with the animal in question. Frankly I'm also inclined to say that sub adult mice are larger than should be fed to beardies anyway... the hair makes it harder to digest and the mass of the prey item compounds the issue. Used successfully for years or not, it has obviously been the cause of a problem for you.

Toxicity is another and far trickier issue... If the mouse had simply decomposed to some degree prior to your utilizing it as a food item, meaning it was incompletely frozen or fresh killed and left without being frozen for more than twenty four hours or so, allowing decomposition to cause gas and toxin buildup inside the mouse... Again, this is all on your shoulders for using the prey item. If you find through the necropsy work that there was an introduced chemical toxin (Mite spray for instance) that you suspect came from the feeder animal AND you have other feeders from the same producer which test positively for the toxic substance AND the animal was sold specifically AS a feeder, then you might be able to request some form of compensation as the practice of utilizing chemical products on animals raised and sold as feeders is inherently negligent.

I would also like to add that seven and a half years is not exactly a short lifespan for a beardie being used as a breeder, egg production takes a massive physical toll on the female's system which can dramatically reduce the lifespan. The fact that it seems to have been indicated that she was easting subadult mice as part of her regular diet for years isn't exactly a positive thing either, as the item is not really nutritionally sound for the species. Combine egg production with a diet high in mammal fat and protein and you're pretty much asking for kidney failure among other problems.

The most difficult part here if you were try to seek compensation is your lack of definite proof that the feeder had anything to do with the death of your animal. Even if toxins are found, you have to prove that they were introduced via the food item and not some other medium and then that your animal was healthy to begin with... systematically rejecting every other possible cause of death is not an easy task by any means, even under lab conditions. When an animal is kept in the constantly changing and frequently unmonitored or recorded area of someone's home it becomes nearly impossible.

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This is the message:

The thing is.....

And that was the end of the message.

The thing is what exactly?

Why was half of a statement sent to me via email?

What possible cause was there for you to waste my time in opening this only to get a message with no meaning?

You wanted the opinions of others, you got them. According to the poll, they seem to be pretty against what you were seeking as the only response indicating that the mouse producer could be at fault was likely your own vote... Not happy with my thoughts on the subject? Don't ask for opinions in an open forum next time. The belief that you could willingly buy a feeder animal from someone, willingly choose the size, willingly feed it to your animal and then attempt to blame the person who sold you the mouse for the animal's death is absurd to begin with.

It's like buying a car, drinking a thirty rack, killing an entire picnicing family by running them over and then trying to blame the car salesman. It just doesn't work, there's far too much of an element of free will that shifts culpability onto the shoulders of the individual who made the choices to go forward with the actions.