Yes, Im one of the lucky ones...

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Posted by Flavia Guimaraes on October 28, 2002 at 00:22:21:

In Reply to: Re: Tail Skin Sore posted by PH Meliss on October 26, 2002 at 14:10:28:

No artificial anything...For me its very easy to raise igs...I put them oudoors, feed them with greens and vegetables, that's all! That's why I have...5!!!

Flavia

::It protrudes out from the skin and is dark colored and very rough in texture. ... He is still quite active, but the tail is obviously sore. He won't let me touch it and he moves his body and tail to keep the sore away from me.

:There's no way to tell what exactly it is - depending on location, could be a burn, could be an abscess could be the artifact of an injury that may or may not progress into an infection and dry gangrene. The best thing to do is to get him checked out by a reptile vet ASAP. You'll find info on these at my Health, Illness, Injury and Stress page.

::Believe it or not, he has never been injured or ill in the last 9 years so we never had a reason to have a vet see him.

:It's great that you've both had such an uneventful (medically speaking ;) 9 years!

:Generally speaking, though, it is a good idea to cultivate a relationship with a vet before one needs one. All too often, we see posts from people who never did and, when something major comes up that is going to be very expensive (in part because they let it go too long before finally seeing a vet), they can't afford to pay the entire bill all at once, and the vets are unwilling to set up payment plans for someone they've never met before...and so the story has a less than happy ending. I'm not saying that this scenario describes you, it's just a general cautionary tail, er, tale. ;)

:There's another good reason for healthy igs to see a vet: baselines. We tend to think that what a laboratory says is "normal" for a blood test is normal, period. It isn't. (See my Abnormal Lab Values in Reptiles article.) The best way to figure out what is wrong when your reptile gets sick is to know what the blood test results were when he was healthy.

:And, finally, if you have free-roamers, or igs who are housed outside part of the year, getting bloodwork done the first several years will help you make sure the ig's getting sufficient UVB. This is especially true if you're one of the lucky ones who may be able to do without any artificial UVB source due to the amount of sun exposure your ig gets during most of the year.

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:PH Meliss
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