Bearded Dragon Constipation; the vibration method really works!
Our little guy Hekr had recently gone about 9 days without pooping, which for him is weird. He’s almost a year and a half old and up til then his habit was every day, or every other day, so going 8 or 9 days was very out of the ordinary for him.
We called the vet yesterday when we noticed physical symptoms starting to manifest; not being as active, not climbing as much, and being noticeably uncomfortable in the tummy region, always repositioning and you can see the tummy twitching as he tried to find a comfortable way to rest.
After we make the appointment with his amazing vet, we recalled an online story of a vet who used a (very low powered) er… personal massager, strapped to a beardies tummy, to get the works moving. We had talked to our vet about this in previous visits, had a laugh about it, but she confirmed that vibration therapy helps in reptiles.
We shrug, and wrap a similarly low-powered device in a folded towel, and let Hekr rest on it for a few moments under careful supervision by us. We did this on a soft surface with another towel and some paper towel under him, in case all hell broke loose. Ten minutes later he starts frantically trying to get back to his enclosure so we put him there. Almost immediately after going back in, a FULL INCH AND A HALF OF URATE comes out, as well as the missing poop from the past week. Boy was corked up proper.
We had a good laugh about it for the next little while, the absurdity of how it worked. The vet receptionist likely had a laugh when we explained why we were cancelling our appointment!
Today he’s resting up a bit. Still not in a mood to climb much, but when I got his salad ready he did leap down to check it out (we use a Strawberry Banana calcium powder from Fluker’s and he is wild for it) so we’re fairly sure he’s just in recovery mode after his… well, unorthodox day yesterday.
still! vibration therapy works! who knew?