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Rescued an iguana, Am I on the right track?

Kerrts

Kerrts

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Brought home an iguana a few days ago, poor thing was more neglected than a ruined bathtowel. Wrong food (diet consisted of strictly red lettuce and watermelon), almost no humidity in the cage resulting in a bad shed patch on her back, dirty water, the works. She's also only about 6 inches SVL at appx. 1.5 years, which is probably a clear result of a horrible diet, yet luckily shows no signs of MBD other than being thin.

Anyways, after doing SERIOUS adjustments to the environment, I just want to know if I'm on the right path here. So far, she's addicted to watermelon and I'm having trouble getting her to eat anything else. Currently we're:

-Blending collard greens, sweet peas, alfalfa pellets, watermelon, calcium suppliment, and kiwi and wrapping the paste it around pieces of watermelon in attempt to wean her from only watermelon

-Keeping terrarium temps steady and correct (basking spot 85-90f, ambient no lower than 80-75f)

-Humidity kept steady via dryer hose connected to humidifier and directly dumping into terrarium at daily intervals (runs 1 hour twice a day)

-Application of aloe/water spray on affected patch on back to ease bad skin off and promote recovery

My questions are:

-Am I taking proper steps to recovery?

AND

-When or how soon can I expect to see improvement?

Thanks for taking the time to read, I tried to keep it from being too tl;dr, but you gotta have the details. I'll include images in another post in the thread.
 
ylW3W.jpg


Here's an image of the bad skin spot, and a reference to what condition she's in right now. Ignoring my thumb, my fingers are about 2ish inches in length to reference her size. She's not lethargic by any means either, so that's also a plus. Forgive the awful quality, it's an imagr from my phone and I couldn't really get her to sit pretty for the picture. o_o
 
sounds like you are on the right track, I was going to suggest the same as Gary - some soakings might help & deffinetly need a UVB light. May want to provide a kitty litter box with shallow water, so the iggy can soak if it wants and also use it as a potty. Mine was a big fan of shredded butternut squash and chopped green beans on top of his salad.

I know not everyone is a fan of Kaplan but I think she has some good info on her site (now a PDF)
http://www.anapsid.org/pdf/icfs.pdf

I highly recommend this book, it was my bible when I had an iggy "ultimate owner's guide" by Hatfield.
http://www.iguana.com/
 
I would definitely soak it heavily right now in warm water(shoulder height) in a container with a locking lid. This hopefully will promote hydration.

I'm a fan of kale because most will eat it. Collards and mustard greens are probably a bit more on the healthy side of offerings.

Squash are great to offer BUT it may need cooked to soften it up. Hit or miss in hardened form.
 
I figured the basking temp implied that she had separate lamps, but I didn't really bother including that since it wasn't anything I needed help with. She has a basking lamp (uva) and a 5.0 uvb lamp as well. On the tupperware container comment, I have a feeling that might freak her out a bit, so whenever I get the chance, I spray her instead. The ambient humidity should help too.

Also, I'm actually using a large dog bowl for her water dish, so she occasionally walks through it.

I'll probably keep feeding her my homemade veggie mush blend till I see improvement in weight and growth then. However, If the feeding issue persists, I may resort to forcefeeding with a small syringe until I see a weight improvement. However, I WILL attempt shredded yellow squash tomorrow, that stuff grows like wildfire out here.
 
Kerrts said:
I figured the basking temp implied that she had separate lamps, but I didn't really bother including that since it wasn't anything I needed help with. She has a basking lamp (uva) and a 5.0 uvb lamp as well. On the tupperware container comment, I have a feeling that might freak her out a bit, so whenever I get the chance, I spray her instead. The ambient humidity should help too.

Also, I'm actually using a large dog bowl for her water dish, so she occasionallyher walks through it.

.
Click to expand...



walking through a water dish is not making them soak. Any confinement will probably "freak her out a bit" but she'll get over it. Unless your air is super dry eg(below 50% humidity which isn't any good for you either btw), ambient humidity is not as much of a concern as proper diet and addressing shed issues and hydration is right now.
 
The air here actually is pretty dry. Kansas is still recovering from a really nasty drought, not much I can do about it for now other than keep the terrarium humid. If I try to just make the house humid, the dry air just sucks it up like a sponge.

Anyways, how long/often should I be doing these soaks for?
 
Kerrts said:
The air here actually is pretty dry. Kansas is still recovering from a really nasty drought, not much I can do about it for now other than keep the terrarium humid. If I try to just make the house humid, the dry air just sucks it up like a sponge.

Anyways, how long/often should I be doing these soaks for?
Click to expand...


for now....

I would be doing it daily until the shed condition improves and you see it is pooping and hopefully even drinking from a dish.

30 minutes should be enough daily.
 
Eating success today!

Got her to readily (and enthusiastically!) take down a heaping pile of butternut squash with her watermelon this morning. I'll probably do this for a few days and attempt to introduce shredded collard greens on thursday w/ her calcium suppliment powder sprinkled on the watermelon.

The soak showed immediate improvement, managed to knock off some of the bad skin on her back (revealing some sore spots, not surprising). Hopefully just being able to breathe past a shell of dead skin layers will help. However, still having a bit of trouble with the second big chunk right on the back of her upper neck.

I can't wait to see her get bigger and healthier as weeks progress, and I will continue to post updates until I've got her in great, healthy condition. ^_^
 
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