Lue - are you saying that the little male quad went blind? Do you have any idea what could have caused that since you had another go blind in the same week? Do you think that they are related? How sad to hear, I hope that your other chams are ok.
By the way - we lost the eggs that were due to hatch now, not sure exactly what happened as they had developed for the last 5 months, it may have had something to do with that heat wave that came through right after they were born when it killed the last clutch. - fingers crossed for the ones that we have from the other female.. they are still growing and look good..
I actually just came home from a visit with Dr. Alfonso. I brought in the male to see if we can get some bloodwork done to find the issue. It's been a long week dealing with this and a good deal has transpired since my last message about the blindness.
At this point both Ivan and I are convinced they were exposed to a toxin and went into shock. The Bradypodion didn't make it past Wednesday evening and it was absolutely heart breaking to witness this poor little one go through what he did.
The male quad has stabilized since Monday but still is only 40% of his normal self. His eye sight partially came back Wednesday evening reacting to movement only 12-18" away. As of yesterday afternoon he began reacting to movement from 6-8' away, which is a sign that things, at the very least, are not getting worse at the moment. I'm still very concerned about his future though and we're hoping whatever toxin that made it's way to these two didn't leave him with any neurological or kidney damage.
Unfortunately he was a little too small (and a bit on the weak side) to take an adequate blood sample from, so we're going to wait until he's a bit larger to see where his level end up.
My biggest concern was that the cause was communicable, since two very different species residing in different rack systems were afflicted at the same time. The good news is no one else has exhibited any symptoms as of yet (knock on wood). This moves us past the idea that it was a communicable pathogen and led us to believe they ingested something. Heck, I even isolated the feeder bin their food comes from to see if we can pinpoint something there, but strangely enough, that feeder bin is doing great. No die off (other than the typical one or two a day) and none of the other animals that ate from that bin prior were affected.
We're trying to keep our hopes up for the quad but based on how the Bradypodion reacted, I'm bracing myself for the worst case scenario. Even though we work with quite a few species and have over 30+ animals at the moment, we still do get attached to them. It's never easy to see a familiar face go. That little Bradypodion had stolen my heart and it was very tough on me losing him. And because of this of all things.
Luis
Keep doing your thing, man!!!!!
