I think my Chameleon has MBD, vet says no?

[Jackson da chameleo]

o ok..thnks for the help, hopefully he can make it through

im sry to hear about your sick cham,.......no one has said anything about an impaction yet????..i recently lost my bearded dragon due to a major impaction, my aunt had been feeding her bugs, she would find around the house..moths, beatles.......if a lizard eats to big of a cricket some times it can get an impaction....these can pass, if you feed it the veggies and supplements(like you are doing), also maybe try warm soaks(thats what i did with my bearded it helped with bowel movement.......BUT ASK OTHERS BEFORE THE WARM SOAKS <I DONT KNOW IF CHAMS WILL LIKE THEM OR NOT???


hope this can help

 

[Lunatic913]

i made an earlier appointment with the vet yesterday that specialized in exotics and had alot of expierence with charms....he said my charm has severe mbd but he never once said or hinted in the check up that it was not curable for mine. i have to take zeus out every morning for an hour to get natural sun so his fractures in his legs can heal. and i also need to give him liquid calcium twice a day. right now while i type, he's in the sun in front of me catching his rays. i do have a question though. crickets are going to be a little hard to hand feed because they move around, i can feed him silk worms also but how about meal worms? can charms eat this?

 

[Will Hayward]

Most MDB is not curable in the sense that the chameleon will be as good as new. Only in the advanced stages might you be able to referse the effects. With good guidance from a vet you could be able to stop the development of MDB, get them on the right track, back to good health and have them continue with a fairly normal life. but if its severe, then you'll probably always have some reminders, like odd shaped casques, bent leggs, etc.

Don't bother with meal worms in my opinion. Silks are a great feeder and are much higer in calcium, especially for hand feeding, (no biting, soft, easy to put in the mouth), but you might run into problems when only feeding soley on silks and liquid, because there is no 'solid'. Sometimes it takes much longer for them to digest or poop. If you toss a cricket once and a while, they seem to be able to digest the rest of the food better.

Try butterworms aswell. Another high calcium worm.

Does the chameleon not use its tongue? Or why are you forcefeeding? Too weak?

 

[Lunatic913]

he is too weak to climb so i must hand feed it...but hes not eating..some people on this forum guided me to a page that showed a liquid form of food. which is blended insects and stuff

 

[Jam]

If your chameleon is too weak to climb I would seriously consider taking out everything that he can climb on. I know that some people will disagree with me, and I do understand their position, but what happened with hermie (my vet thinks) was he had MBD, was too weak to climb but tried anyways fell, broke a limb, kept trying to climb, falling, and breaking more bones. Nasty cycle. Hermie had MBD so severely that you could hardly view his fractures on xray film his legs were so lacking in bone density -- they blended in with soft tissues. Hermie was a tough guy and I give him credit -- he's alive because he was too stubborn to give up, and I just kept fightin for him as long as he was willing to fight.

Hermie had casts on all four of his legs. Yes, some of them did heal crookedly (the only real way to prevent that would have been to put pins in them), but he uses them just fine. He has regained his bone density. Really, in order for a fracture to be healed the break needs to be immobilized from one joint before to one joint after the break. This can be accomplished with a cast/splint, or (it takes a lot longer because there is some movement) with strict confinement. If they keep moving (which they will being chameleons) the bones don't get a chance to heal.

It is hard for them to hunt because they can't move well ... he couldn't stalk his prey or anything. Hermie being the fighter that he is coped iwth it by simply opening up his mouth, and we would oblidge and drop wax worms and silk worms into it, and he would chew. we fed apple sauce and baby food by syringe ... he would open his mouth and we would put some in (no, he wasn't just hissing at us, there's a difference ). he received high doses of liquid calcium twice a day also. we also had to syringe feed him water.

Anyways, these are just my thoughts on the matter.

And ps -- to the person who suggested the soak for a possible impaction I have done them before with hermie. Probably stressful for them (make sure that they don't drown!) but successful also, and better than an impaction. I use them on my beardie regularly and it always is VERY effective...

 

[Fate X]

how did it get to where theres so little calcium etc.
was the problem low calcium?

 

[Jam]

We don't know for sure. Hermie had a UVB bulb, dusted gutloaded crickets with repcal (and D3) everyday and reptavite everyother day. I think after talking to some people here (Will I think?) that I allowed him to grow too much too quickly. I fed him as much as he would eat three times a day and always left a little extra in the cage for a snack, and I think that his body just couldn't keep making enough bone to keep up with as much as the food intake was allowing him to grow.

 

[Lunatic913]

sounds like my situation

 

[westcoastchameleons]

you must get him treatment, it can become to bad to even give hope

 

[Jam]

west coast chams is right ... without proper treatment they die a very agonizing death ... eventually they will start to have seizures and heart failure because they don't even haev enough calcium for proper nerve function.

 

[Lunatic913]

my charm is getting a lot better. he is climbing now , he has strength to grasp on to my hans. im still giving him liquid calcium and im hand feeding him wax worms and veal baby food for protein. it will take about another month the vet said. but he should recover. never lose hope and do the most you can for your charm, you never know

 

[Frank Castle]

Good to hear, Keep with it. Good Luck

Frank