Hey everyone,
We took Zephyr out today to clean his cage and snap a few pics. We noticed in the photos that Zephyr's lip looks a bit off. Could anyone shed some light on the situation? Picture is posted.
Thanks
It could just be dried cricket inards....It needs to be removed so it won't block the pores along the gum line which can lead to an abscess. Take a moist Q-tip and try to dislodge it carefully. Hopefully it will just come off and then look normal. If you leave it there it will just serve as a place to accumulate more gunk. If you don't have a Q-tip you can fold a paper towel and roll a corner between your fingers until it becomes stiff enough to use like a Q-tip.
our little guy is pretty squirmy (and tiny), what do you think would be the best way to do it? We were thinking about using a towel to grab him once he goes to bed tonight. any thoughts?
take him out, and gently hold him between your thumb and other fingers so that he is basically laying on your hand with your thumb restraining him and rub it off. Be very very gentle and try not to take too long, then give him a nice mini superworm or silkworm for being a good boy.
Don't take him out when he's sleeping. That would be an extremely frightening experience for him. I don't know of any species that likes to be grabbed while they are sleeping
This is why we get forum approval before we do anything PardalisGirl He is just such a squirmy little guy! We just tried to coax/grab him out of the cage (he is still in his day cycle) and he is still pretty "stand-off-ish" from this afternoons visit outside of his little jungle. We are hoping that he will come more towards the front of the cage soon (this evening) or we might have to wait until tomorrow morning. (Which we really dont want to do) Thanks so much PardalisGirl and Pshh, you are always so helpful to everyone on the boards His lip is hardly noticable when you look at him in person. We are hoping that we caught it early and can avoid a his first vet visit.
Thanks
So, we tried to get Zephyr from his cage to clean his lip on Sat. night and he was not up for it. We decided to let him sleep and try the next morning (Sunday) to minimize stress. The next morning silly Zephyr decided to shed! His lip has gone down! (we are hoping that he got all of whatever was in his lip out with his shed) He has had a very busy (and somewhat stressful) weekend trying to get out of the old and into his new "more blue" jumpsuit. He is having his morning feed and I am going to get a better look at his lip this afternoon and give it a bit of a warm water swabbing.
Thanks for all of your concern, just thought it was a bit ironic that he decided to take matter into his own "hands"