Honestly, I was hoping that you'd post the answers to the how to ask for help questions because it is easy for one person to miss something important.
For the last question there, we do not need to know your town, but knowing what state you're in gives people an idea of the temperatures where you are.
Your vet has given you some very good advice.
She didn't tell you to force feed unless it was absolutely necessary and she has given you good advice about UV.
If your UVB bulb is older than 6 months, it is almost certainly doing a poor job of giving off UVB--which she absolutely needs now in order for her body to use the calcium she is getting.
The bulbs light up brightly but put out less UVB over time--that's why after 6 months we change them for a new one.
Your parents don't need to spend a lot of money on a special reptile long fluorescent bulb fixture. A shop light fixture from Home Depot or Lowes can be just as good and with the money saved on the new fixture, you can buy the Reptisun 5.0 bulb.
Please do not give her "extra" calcium with D3 because that would be bad for her--just dust her bugs with calcium without D3 and give her the calcium drops 2x a day like the vet told you.
To answer your questions:
Phoenixworms are one of
very few feeders that do not need to be dusted with calcium.
I've even fed them to my chams' babies as part of a nutritious, varied diet because they contain plenty of calcium and are also less fatty than other worm feeders like mealworms and superworms that do need calcium dusting.
My adult chams get fed Phoenixworms as part of a variety of insects.
You do need to be very careful with her right now because her bones are so fragile.
I would be afraid to force feed her anything for exactly the reason you mentioned--I would not want to break her jaw.
Plus force feeding is stressful to chams.
If she can and will eat bugs on her own, then don't be afraid that she will get spoiled by handfeeding.
Handfeeding her now is probably one of the best things to do for her until she is strong enough to move around well enough to feed herself.
If she can't chew, then the bugs can actually be either mushed up in spoons or squeezed into a needle-less syringe and then gently squeezed into her mouth, so all she would need to do is swallow them.
It sounds disgusting but it can work for sick chams.
Some people even make a "bug juice" for their sick chams and if you want to do that the recipe is this;
Originally Posted by laurie
If you need the homemade way to make food, make bug juice. Bug juice is easy and really good for your cham. Take a small blender add 4 oz of pedalite, 4 oz of ensure, some calcium, and a lot of well gut loaded feeders, I use crickets cause they blend best. Blend it until everything is liquid, strain it to get out legs and thinks that did not blend. Put it in a syringe and give it to your cham. i have kept extra in the frig for a max of 3 days. It makes more than you need but it doesn't blend well unless you have sufficient liquid.
Did the vet inject her with some calcium to get her calcium levels up immediately?
Exactly how warm is it now where you are?
If it is warm enough, then unfiltered natural sunlight is definitely a great idea.
Screens do reduce the amount of UV passing through but they don't eliminate the UV entirely like glass does.
If the temperatures are in the 70s then safely letting her bask in sunlight near an open screened window would make a lot of sense--and I'm sure you already know that you'll have to be 100% sure she can't fall from where she is.
You can place her on a towel to help protect her fragile bones and you can use towels and pillows to cushion below her as a little insurance just in case she somehow fell anyway.
If the Phoenix worms are higher in calcium, would I still have to dust them? I really like the idea of them being softer, because of the episode she had last night. I will definitely read though the list, and make adjustments, and make sure I am doing things properly
