will another tegu teach mine how to eat?

[amber n jesse longden]

what i am wondering is if i was to get another tegu will it teach mine how to eat? right now i have to force feed my b&w with a syringe. i was told to do this by the vet. i do not like having to do this. she gets very upset with me afterwards and doesn't want to come near me. im not sure why she wont eat by herself but it worries me. does anyone know anything about this? any tips or hints would be very appreciated.

 

[Tannaros]

what i am wondering is if i was to get another tegu will it teach mine how to eat? right now i have to force feed my b&w with a syringe. i was told to do this by the vet. i do not like having to do this. she gets very upset with me afterwards and doesn't want to come near me. im not sure why she wont eat by herself but it worries me. does anyone know anything about this? any tips or hints would be very appreciated.

I highly doubt that your tegu simply doesn't 'know' how to eat. More than likely it's either husbandry related or an associative behavior.

What sort of foods have you tried offering? How often are you feeding? What is your set up (lighting, basking, humidity, substrate, etc.)? What is the light cycle?

Have you seen your tegu defecate recently? Is there a possibility your tegu ingested substrate? How long has the non-feeding response been going on?

How are you presenting food? Are you always present? Is the tegu in or out of their cage? Does much handling go on before or after feeding?

There are quite a few things that could be wrong. Force feeding I've had to do in the past, and I always felt bad about it because it was due to my lack of diligence in husbandry.

 

[Roadkill]

There are situations where indeed animals don't know how to eat. I know directly of a case where a tegu underwent surgery and either the anaesthesia was too high and "cooked" a part of the brain or during recovery the tegu didn't get enough oxygen and suffered brain damage, either way before the surgery the tegu was normal and after the surgery the animal would never eat on its own. Wound up donating it to a school as the kids had the time to give it the attention it would need and with no feeding response it wasn't an aggressive animal.
Whether another tegu could demonstrate to your tegu to eat, that's another question. I've often found "community" living tends to promote appetite as there is now more competition. However, at the same time, sometimes another animal won't be "equal" but dominant and this can just intimidate the other one even more.

 

[KritterKeeper]

Also how long have you had the tegu? how old is it(if you know)? and where did it come from?

 

[Tannaros]

There are situations where indeed animals don't know how to eat. I know directly of a case where a tegu underwent surgery and either the anaesthesia was too high and "cooked" a part of the brain or during recovery the tegu didn't get enough oxygen and suffered brain damage, either way before the surgery the tegu was normal and after the surgery the animal would never eat on its own. Wound up donating it to a school as the kids had the time to give it the attention it would need and with no feeding response it wasn't an aggressive animal.
Whether another tegu could demonstrate to your tegu to eat, that's another question. I've often found "community" living tends to promote appetite as there is now more competition. However, at the same time, sometimes another animal won't be "equal" but dominant and this can just intimidate the other one even more.

I never intended to imply that it is an impossible circumstance, just that I highly doubted the OP's tegu in particular was suffering from some neurological or otherwise disorder. I assumed that would be pertinent information to include in the post itself, and possibly documented by the vet.

From what I can find, the tegu does eat - but since being fed raw egg it refuses to consume anything else. Is this correct?

 

[amber n jesse longden]

ive tried every type of food. from turkey to crickets. she just doesnt seem to have a food response for anything but raw egg. i do everything right with her as far as husbandry, her temps are all correct and humidity is good. ive tried feeding inside and outside of cage. with handling befor feeding and not handling befor feeding. ive even left the room for hours at a time. she just doesnt seem to b interested in anything. shes always asking for attention and she gets it( she pretty much gets what she wants. she extremly spoiled) she does seem to hide alot. im not sure of her age. when i got her she only had a tiny bit of green on her head. i got her from petco in concord new hampshire the petco is privatly owned not coporate. she was shipped from california i think. she ate ok for the first week. the first week she even ate a pinky with a little fuzz. she loved omnivore mix. but after two weeks of having her she wouldnt eat for a week until i tried the raw egg just to get something into her. when we went to the vet friday they said she seems to hav either constipation or blockage. they told me to feed her baby food stage 1 for now. i got her turkey,chicken,beef, squash, carrots, and sweet potato. i was also told to mix that with pedialite. and was given a laxative to give her every 12 hours for 5 days. i took 90% of her substrate out it was a mix of ecoearth and jungle miix and put cypris mulch in she has an inch of eco earth left so she can burrow. the top 2 inches is cypris mulch i even bought brand new lights. her heat light is a exoterra sunglo 100 wat. and a exoterra uvb tropical 100, 26w. i honestly dont know what it could be. the vet said she healthy except for the constipation/blockage. im really confused

 

[KritterKeeper]

I see in your sig it says columbian/argentine tegu..why do you have both listed? It can only be one or the other. Can you post a pic of her and her setup?
Ill tell you how mine is set up(not sure if itll help but who knows).. Hes in a 6'x2' glass tank with sliding doors on eco earth. He has 2 basking spots..one is roughly 115-120 and the other is 95-100. I use the reptisun 10.0 tube UV light. I keep a cat litter pan as a water source and mist as needed to keep humidity where it needs to be. My lights are on from 9am to 9pm. I also feed in the cage with a shallow bowl sitting on a paper towel to minimize ingesting substrate and ive had no problems.
If the problem is impaction i would think that really needs to be taken care of fairly quickly which im sure you know. I know this isnt quite the same but when my dogs dont feel well they wont eat their regular food either so i dont see why itd be dif for a tegu if shes blocked up she wont want to add anything to the problem and make herself feel worse ya know.
With beardies ive often seen people recommend giving a warm bath and very gently massaging the stomach to help move things along..perhaps that would help?
I would keep feeding the soft foods until things clear up and hopefully once she feels better she'll start eating regular foods. Id do what the vet said and do warm baths and makes sure the basking spot is hot enough.
Just curious..did the vet do any xrays?

 

[amber n jesse longden]

she is both shes has the color on her haed of an argentine and the body of a colombian. i have her breeding papers, i didnt believe it either at first. her basking spot is anywhere from 115 to 120. she has a uvb 100 tropical light also. her substrate is a mix of eco earth and cypris mulch. she has a large tuperware for a pond with a waterfall. it seems that shes blocked with the egg that she was eating. shes starting to poop it out now. shes getting alot better now. more active and friendly. shes been getting baths almost everyday. and i message her belly multiiple times a day. the vet did not get xrays i have to call them tomorrow with an update.

 

[KritterKeeper]

Glad to hear shes starting to do better. Im not trying to be a jerk or anything but i have serious doubts that she is really a cross..esp since she came from a pet store.. However id love to see some pics..

 

[amber n jesse longden]

i have pics up. if u go into media and look for houdini you'll find her

 

[SnakeCharmr728]

The picture of her in your profile pic, is 100% colombian. Sorry to say but if you have breeding papers, they are fake. There has been no accounts of crosses or successful captive breeding of colombians in the US. Especially if coming from a Petco, which I was a manager of petco a few years ago and have never heard of one being privately owned and not corporate so I think whoever is telling you these things is throwing you for a loop.
Colors hardly mean anything, they are only a guideline, the true way to tell the difference is via scale count.

My two cents is that since your tegu is not underweight, leave it alone. Dont force feed as that is only causing stress and when animals are stressed they dont eat.

 

[SnakeCharmr728]

Also, if you vet mentioned impaction, thats something that needs to be addressed and adding more food into her isnt going to help.

 

[KritterKeeper]

Yep i agree with SnakeCharmr . Def just a columbian..looks exactly like mine.

 

[SnakeCharmr728]

I just looked at the other photos you have uploaded of her, she is indeed colombian. Argentines do not have different colors within one scale on their heads, colombians do. It also appears to have the single loreal scale, vs the two that arg. have

 

[amber n jesse longden]

we are not going to disagree with anyone but why does his we found out its a boy. why does his lines go the oposite way then the rest of his lines

 

[amber n jesse longden]

btw cat broke our camera today also fell off the dresser ahhhh that darn cat shes a Chantilly very rare

 

[amber n jesse longden]

we also have a Bombay

 

[SnakeCharmr728]

your tegu does not have the distinctive line going down the sides of its back like how argentines do. is that what you mean by lines? How did you determine him male?

 

[amber n jesse longden]

btw cat broke our camera today also fell off the dresser ahhhh that darn cat shes a Chantilly very rare

this cat can sing like a bird no lie

 

[amber n jesse longden]

he has the small little bebes brought him to prehistorix www.prehistorix.co/