The bearded dragon is one of the easiest reptiles to maintain in captivity. However, like all other animals, it happens to suffer from various health disorders. Constipation is one of them.
Fortunately, there are effective treatments to successfully cure your beardie.
Constipation in the bearded dragon: the symptoms
Constipation is a problem that can manifest itself in both humans and animals. It results in an absence of evacuation of stools.
These are hard, and remain stuck in the body. Thus, a constipated beardie is simply a pet that cannot pass stools.
So if your reptile’s stools are increasingly rare or even absent, you need to take quick action to treat it. Otherwise, it might die.
What can cause constipation in beardies?
Constipation in the bearded dragon can be due to different causes. The most common is food.
Indeed, a bad diet can be at the root of this problem. It can also be the ingestion of a specific food, which the reptile cannot digest.
You can supplement his food and, thanks to a fiber addition, help it to decongest.
Thus, just as certain foods can give it diarrhea, others on the contrary can constipate him.
For the well-being of your animal, you must pay attention to his reactions. This will help you detect the foods that cause it digestive disorders, in order to exclude them from its diet.
It is also possible that the beardie is constipated because it has ingested a foreign body, such as a stone.
Finally, apart from the causes related to his diet, we find in good place stress. A stressed pet will also have difficulty passing stools. This stress can be caused by:
- Poor maintenance of his living environment;
- A difficult cohabitation between two males;
- Too many passages in front of his terrarium;
- Excessive handling, etc.
Finally, the most serious cause of constipation in a bearded dragon is parasitic infection. It happens as in human, that parasites such as worms are introduced into the body of the pet to reproduce there.
These parasites lodge in the intestines, and can then cause different types of problems such as diarrhea, loss of blood in the stool or constipation.
What precautions should be taken when the bearded dragon is constipated?
When you notice your pet’s stools missing or scarce, you should take a few simple precautions fairly quickly.
You must take action to try to eliminate the various potential causes of this problem. It will therefore be necessary:
- Quarantine it, because the beardie lives better when it is isolated in its living space (it thus avoids contact with possible infections);
- Keep it in a fairly warm environment, for example by increasing the temperature of its hot spot by a few degrees
- Feed it with forceps to prevent it from ingesting anything and coming into contact with bacteria you carry on your hands
- Limit its sources of stress and in particular the agitation in front of its terrarium;
- Respect its diet according to its age (young pogonas are carnivorous, while adults are herbivorous).
How to treat constipation in beardies?
To treat constipation in a bearded dragon, the first thing you should do is give it a bath in lukewarm water. Leave it inside for about fifteen minutes, gently kneading its stomach if possible.
Repeat the process several times, in order to obtain results fairly quickly.
If this solution has no effect, then offer your pet a bowl of plants, mainly made up of fruit, in order to boost its metabolism.
You can also count on products like:
- Calcium , to promote the proper functioning of his intestines
- Paraffin oil, in every other meal, to lubricate his intestines
- Hyper-enriched foods for herbivores or carnivores, depending on their age.
We should not forget either the importance of physical activity in the proper functioning of the metabolism.
So when the weather permits, do not hesitate to take out your pogona to allow him to spend himself.
After two days, if none of your tips work, you will have to take him to see a veterinarian.
The latter will be in the best position to prescribe a really effective drug against constipation.
Recommended reading: What happens when a bearded dragon goes into hibernation?
My name is Brad and I am the main editor of BeardieZilla.com.
The only goal of this site is quite simply to be able to help you. To help you by the means of my experiment, of the relation which I maintain with my bearded dragon as well as some of my knowledge about beardies.
I hope that you will find answers to some of your most pressing questions here.
Thank you for stopping by and enjoy the blog!
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