My panther has been keeping his left eye closed. Please help!

[lummus55]

• He is an 1 year and 3 month old male panther in my care for 10 months.
• We handle him usual once a day for about 20 minutes, he seems to really enjoy it. He will wait at the tip of the branch and crawl out to us when we open the cage.
• We feed him a about 10 crickets a day lightly dusted with repticalcuim without d3 and once a month dust them with reptivite. We also have a bowl in the cage where we keep one or two meal worms.
• The crickets are gutloaded with a combination of carrots and fluckers cricket food.
• We have a dripper system setup that we keep dripping through out the day, and we sray the cage with warm water 3 times a day with a normal spray bottle
• His poops seem normal. No parasites or anything abnormal that can be seen with the eye.

• Cage
• We keep him in a large 18x18x36 open air cage that we are planning on upgrading soon.
• The lighting is a 15w retiglo and a 45w house bulb for warmth. We make sure the light is at least 5 inches away from him to not be too close The basking spot is around 86-87 degrees and the night time temp never drops below 70.
• We maintain a humidity of 45-60 though I will say this has been a struggle to maintain. We try and spray the cage often but it seems to drop as soon as the water drops dry up.
• We just put a larger golden pathos in the cage to help maintain the humidity. The other plant was much smaller so hopefully this will help with the humidity issue.
• The cage is in the dining room across from the living area. So I wouldn't say it's high traffic but he does see us walking by quite a bit. His cage is about 4 feet from the ceiling.
• We live in Texas were the temps are relatively high and humidity is also relatively high.

The issue started about a week ago. We noticed he was only keeping one eye open and the other remains closed. The eye does not look irratated in any way (got a look when he opened it for a few minutes.) He will open it from time to time. He seems to open it more if we spray him. He also will open it when we take him out of the cage. He still has a great appetite, although he doesn't seem to be moving around as much this week. Anything will help. We don't have a local rep vet in the area so I will most likely have to solve the issue myself.

 

[lummus55]

Edit. If he were to get sick I would travel to a vet. But I don't believe he is. Hopefully it's just a minor issue that can be fixed by twicking something.

 

[Andee]

Definitely would increase your reptivite dusting to twice a month. And change your gutloading regime to something waaaay healthier. His cage looks extremely bare so he could be getting too much uvb and not being able to block it well with shade. Also he may have debri in his eye? Have you tried giving him long warm mistings? Like 10minutes or more. Or taking him into the shower for 30 minutes?

 

[alphakenc]

From what ur picture showing,his left eye is sunken n close,take a picture on his good right eyes with the cage open so we can see clearly on his right eyes

 

[lummus55]

Here is the other eye. Just gave him a warm shower so he is a little damp.

 

[lummus55]

Definitely would increase your reptivite dusting to twice a month. And change your gutloading regime to something waaaay healthier. His cage looks extremely bare so he could be getting too much uvb and not being able to block it well with shade. Also he may have debri in his eye? Have you tried giving him long warm mistings? Like 10minutes or more. Or taking him into the shower for 30 minutes?

What would you recommend switching the gutloading to? And ok I will dust twice a month from now on. Yes I did some research when I first noticed and have given him a few 20 minute showers. Also I will put more foliage up top so he can be blocked if need be. Thank you!

 

[Andee]

He also looks a little on the heavy side, in my opinion, so if you plan to feed him every day I honestly would only feed 5 feeders. Or you can feed every other day.

 

[alphakenc]

Here is the other eye. Just gave him a warm shower so he is a little damp.

Ok not a big problem,it just slightly sunken,the solution is use a eye dropper or syringe to drip water in his mouth,u will have to do this at least five times a day,plus use the lukewarm water to mist on his left eyes,picture his eyes is an half fill water balloon the more water u give him the more improvements on that sunken eyes.

 

[Andee]

Gut loading is strongly recommended to be more heavy on the leafy greens like mustard greens, Tuscan/Dino kale, raddichio, then use a better dry gutload. If you use fruits preferably use fruits like figs, papayas, mango. Veggies like carrots are fine, red bell pepper are good. My preference for gutloads is toake my own, but you can easily buy a couple like superload and then mix a few tablespoons of that with a more benign one like cricket crack or bug buffet.

 

[lummus55]

Ok not a big problem,it just slightly sunken,the solution is use a eye dropper or syringe to drip water in his mouth,u will have to do this at least five times a day,plus use the lukewarm water to mist on his left eyes,picture his eyes is an half fill water balloon the more water u give him the more improvements on that sunken eyes.

Ok, I will try this as well. Thank you!

 

[Andee]

In my opinion sunken eyes like his good eye, is not a good way to tell hydration, generally that eye looks relatively well hydrated especially since you are taking a picture of it. My experience with pretty much all chameleons if they pull in their eye turrets to varying degrees when pictures are taken of them.

 

[alphakenc]

The difference between the mist n syringe drip is night n day,some cham will never take in enough water no mater how much u mist,since the eye is already sunken ,it means he already been thru certain days or even weeks without enough water in his system,the syringe will make sure u put in the water in his mouth(do it very slow n repeat),but misting is only 50/50 chance.
I have over 100 plus babies at one time,and whenever I see one baby needs more water,I will make sure he/she get it regardless,u can check on my media pictures,and all my babies eyes are plumped without any sunken eyes,daily observations is the best prevention before problem start occurred,hope this will help ur cham's sunken eye problem.

 

[lummus55]

Here is a better representation of his good eye. I'm not sure it's totally a hydration issue. It looks pretty plump to me. Also when he does open his other eye it looks like this as well. It's like he is pulling the other eye in on his own when it's closed.

 

[alphakenc]

This picture was directly taken with my 2 year

old babys eyes at right now,and u can see his eye is not sunken.
Same cham from the top position

 

[alphakenc]

The best way to take the picture is from a top angle so u can see his eyes clearly not sunken ,since ur picture is what showing us at that moment,so I will only give u what I saw base on ur pic showing.

 

[Andee]

Yes but in my opinion it depends on how comfortable your chameleon is with taking pics. My jacksons Cham I know has no hydration problems because her eyes are far more plump than even your two year olds. But every time I take her picture she retracts her eyes extremely. In my opinion I don't think OP should or should not do anything. Just try generally everything that sounds safe and if it doesn't fix it, that most likely means a vet visit is in order. We have covered pretty much all home care.

 

[lummus55]

Better picture of good eye and the eye he has been keeping closed.

 

[lummus55]

Thanks everyone for the tips. I will keep y'all updated.

 

[alphakenc]

Yes but in my opinion it depends on how comfortable your chameleon is with taking pics. My jacksons Cham I know has no hydration problems because her eyes are far more plump than even your two year olds. But every time I take her picture she retracts her eyes extremely. In my opinion I don't think OP should or should not do anything. Just try generally everything that sounds safe and if it doesn't fix it, that most likely means a vet visit is in order. We have covered pretty much all home care.

Show me ur Jackson cham with the cam point directly on the eyes n from the top of the angle ,so I can see what are u talking about the camera thing.

 

[Andee]

If you end up needing to go to your vet, first thing you ask for is a good eye flushing on that bad side. Have them do it a couple times and see if anything comes out. Sometimes it's just tiny shed pieces that they can get out that are bothering them. If that doesn't work you may want to ask for a D3, vitamin shot combo. Occasionally that perks my rescues up with eye problems enough that they can take care of it themselves and it doesn't bother them. Most of these don't cost much in the grand scheme of things. Keep a watch out for any unnatural localized swelling under the lid. That could be a sign of infection and pus and that is a sign of immediate need for vet intervention.