jajeanpierre
Chameleon Enthusiast
I just went through Hell with aflatoxin poisoning of my collection. I believe the collection was poisoned by contaminated crickets.
Alfatoxins are toxins produced by fungi the Aspergillus family, usually Aspergillus flavus that infects grain crops. Aflatoxins are very powerful toxins.
I had many vets consulting with me, some out of the goodness of their hearts. I had an exotic pathologist (the same pathologist the San Antonio Zoo uses) come to my house and look over my collection and my husbandry. He took two ill animals for pathology. Four more became so ill over the next few days, I took them and prepared them for necropsy per the pathologist's instructions and gave them to the pathologist. There is a huge benefit to kill and immediately preserve the animal for pathology, but it is not for the meek. The pathologist sent the slides from the six animals off to another pathologist who is an expert in reptile pathology. I've got a few more jars of other chameleons sitting in formalin just in case they want to do more.
All agree--I think they all agree--that a toxin is involved.
Aflatoxicosis is not easy to diagnose in a living animal and are usually only diagnosed by culturing the food sources and that was not done. By the time we started to look at a toxin, it was too late to culture the crickets.
A dear friend of mine, an avian vet who did a research fellowship at London Zoological Society working on reptile and avian projects was the first to suggest aflatoxicosis. He's now convinced that is what I was dealing with. He told me toxic changes are not specific and it would be nearly impossible to implicate aflatoxins unless fungal cultures had revealed the presence of fungi from the genus Aspergillus in the crickets.
I am not sure whether the crickets were contaminated from moldy feed fed to them at the cricket farm or my own poor cricket husbandry as at times they were kept too crowded and too wet. I also wonder if the crickets ate moldy vegetation from soggy pots of plants. Moldy grain is the usual source of aflatoxins. I only fed the crickets fresh veggies, but Aspergillus flavus is common in the soil and in decaying vegetation. I do know that as soon as I removed crickets as a food source they improved. The improvement was immediate and for some dramatic.
I think aflatoxicosis is a lot more common than we realize. Having gone through this with so many affected animals at once, I recognize similarities in stories from people describing symptoms of their sick chameleon.
The pathology reports were all similar and inconclusive but all showed evidence of a slow intoxication.
Symptoms in the living animals started with depression, poor growth, and dark colors. As they got sicker, they ended up seeming to avoid light and ended up on the ground. Some exhibited neurological symptoms and at times appeared blind and having seizures. There seemed to be skin infections or skin integrity issues as I marked up the cheeks of many just from restraining them when I was supplement feeding. Many ended up writhing on the ground in apparent agony for days at a time. Some would appear fine and then be on the ground rolling around a few minutes later. Others lay in a crumpled heap on the ground, sometimes on their backs or sides. I think they had a suppressed immune system as some of my captive born and bred babies had very heavy parasite loads that they could only have gotten from the feeder insects.
The animals most affected were the babies and the gravid new imports. Some animals, including babies, were never affected or were hardly affected at all.. Some of my adult long-term captive female quads and graciliors developed very bad edemas that I have not been able to clear. One long-term captive female ended up with huge black necrotic patches on her body after laying her clutch--it was as if her skin was too fragile to cope with brushing against any surface. She's slowly healing. My long-term captive males seemed unaffected.
Some of those animals that lay for days on their backs or writhing in pain and blind are now well on the road to recovery. At least two of the vets I have consulted with believe they will make a full and complete recovery--the other vets have not weighed in on that yet.
It was awful to see so many in my collection suffering so terribly and not be able to do anything about it. I wanted to euthanize but the vets all wanted me to keep them alive until they had an answer. I think I now have the answer. I've removed crickets as a food source although the vet friend who was the first to identify the problem wants me to breed my own.
I wonder if edema caused by crickets--something many of us have experienced--is really a mild case of aflatoxicosis.
I hope my disaster can help others. I would hate anyone to go through what I just did.
Alfatoxins are toxins produced by fungi the Aspergillus family, usually Aspergillus flavus that infects grain crops. Aflatoxins are very powerful toxins.
I had many vets consulting with me, some out of the goodness of their hearts. I had an exotic pathologist (the same pathologist the San Antonio Zoo uses) come to my house and look over my collection and my husbandry. He took two ill animals for pathology. Four more became so ill over the next few days, I took them and prepared them for necropsy per the pathologist's instructions and gave them to the pathologist. There is a huge benefit to kill and immediately preserve the animal for pathology, but it is not for the meek. The pathologist sent the slides from the six animals off to another pathologist who is an expert in reptile pathology. I've got a few more jars of other chameleons sitting in formalin just in case they want to do more.
All agree--I think they all agree--that a toxin is involved.
Aflatoxicosis is not easy to diagnose in a living animal and are usually only diagnosed by culturing the food sources and that was not done. By the time we started to look at a toxin, it was too late to culture the crickets.
A dear friend of mine, an avian vet who did a research fellowship at London Zoological Society working on reptile and avian projects was the first to suggest aflatoxicosis. He's now convinced that is what I was dealing with. He told me toxic changes are not specific and it would be nearly impossible to implicate aflatoxins unless fungal cultures had revealed the presence of fungi from the genus Aspergillus in the crickets.
I am not sure whether the crickets were contaminated from moldy feed fed to them at the cricket farm or my own poor cricket husbandry as at times they were kept too crowded and too wet. I also wonder if the crickets ate moldy vegetation from soggy pots of plants. Moldy grain is the usual source of aflatoxins. I only fed the crickets fresh veggies, but Aspergillus flavus is common in the soil and in decaying vegetation. I do know that as soon as I removed crickets as a food source they improved. The improvement was immediate and for some dramatic.
I think aflatoxicosis is a lot more common than we realize. Having gone through this with so many affected animals at once, I recognize similarities in stories from people describing symptoms of their sick chameleon.
The pathology reports were all similar and inconclusive but all showed evidence of a slow intoxication.
Symptoms in the living animals started with depression, poor growth, and dark colors. As they got sicker, they ended up seeming to avoid light and ended up on the ground. Some exhibited neurological symptoms and at times appeared blind and having seizures. There seemed to be skin infections or skin integrity issues as I marked up the cheeks of many just from restraining them when I was supplement feeding. Many ended up writhing on the ground in apparent agony for days at a time. Some would appear fine and then be on the ground rolling around a few minutes later. Others lay in a crumpled heap on the ground, sometimes on their backs or sides. I think they had a suppressed immune system as some of my captive born and bred babies had very heavy parasite loads that they could only have gotten from the feeder insects.
The animals most affected were the babies and the gravid new imports. Some animals, including babies, were never affected or were hardly affected at all.. Some of my adult long-term captive female quads and graciliors developed very bad edemas that I have not been able to clear. One long-term captive female ended up with huge black necrotic patches on her body after laying her clutch--it was as if her skin was too fragile to cope with brushing against any surface. She's slowly healing. My long-term captive males seemed unaffected.
Some of those animals that lay for days on their backs or writhing in pain and blind are now well on the road to recovery. At least two of the vets I have consulted with believe they will make a full and complete recovery--the other vets have not weighed in on that yet.
It was awful to see so many in my collection suffering so terribly and not be able to do anything about it. I wanted to euthanize but the vets all wanted me to keep them alive until they had an answer. I think I now have the answer. I've removed crickets as a food source although the vet friend who was the first to identify the problem wants me to breed my own.
I wonder if edema caused by crickets--something many of us have experienced--is really a mild case of aflatoxicosis.
I hope my disaster can help others. I would hate anyone to go through what I just did.
