M. chahoua necropsy *GRAPHIC*

[Kibaja]

Hey guys.

Sadly, I found my female Pine Island chahoua dead in her tank last night when I went to mist her, with no apparent prior signs of illness. Needless to say I am very upset, especially since she was looking much better after dropping her first clutch.

I went ahead and did a necropsy right away before post-mortem changes took place and decided to share the findings in case they would by any chance happen to help anyone in the future.

I'm a vet student and I've done my fair share of necropsies on larger mammals, so the basic process isn't foreign to me. However, I study in Slovenian, so doing the writeup in english was a bit of a challenge. I tried to keep it relatively simple and easy to follow. Unfortunately I cannot post pictures on the forum directly yet, as I am relatively inactive, so I saved the writeup with the photos to a separate googledoc found here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/18say5jN54yZAewhKd85P6wJY5jb2XBLoupM9XE4YyX4/edit

If people would like I can go back and label different organs and details.


Unfortunately I haven't had a chance to work with reptiles directly in my studies yet, so I cannot say for sure what went wrong, but I added my musings to the end of the document.
I've done a necropsy on an agama that died of old age in the past, but the structure of tissue varies quite a bit between families so it's hard to compare those results with a gecko.

If anyone has any input or notices anything I may have missed from the pictures, I would be very thankful for it. I've searched for other photos of necropsies of geckos on the web, and the one's I've seen had much worse changes on the ovaries (much larger/more of the follicles/calcified eggs etc), so I'm not even sure if they were the cause of death or simply physiological due to ovulation.

I compared the pale coloration of the mucosas to that of my male who is perfectly healthy, so I do believe she was anemic. But, it is possible that ovaries and liver held more blood than normal because of hypostasis/suggillation (the draining of blood to lower parts of the body where the dead animal lies due to the stop of circulation). Again, I doubt this is the reason because I seemed to have found her very quickly after death (a fact that really depresses me) since there was no stiffness to the musculature yet.

Either way I'll be keeping a much closer eye on the male for the next few days in case it was something bacterial/viral, but he seems perfectly fine at the moment.


Cheers
-Pia

 

[Koghis]

Thanks a lot for this! Very helpful and interesting! Still always sad to loose an animal..

 

[mikew1234]

Unfortunately, the link did not work for me. It's always sad to lose an animal, but when you can learn a little from it, it isn't nearly as bad as if it dies and nothing is learned.

 

[Hannibal]

Sorry for your loss.
Your necropsy was quite detailed & very educational; thank you for sharing.

 

[Aimless]

that was very interesting! I appreciate both the pictures and the descriptions.

is it at all possible that her pale mucosa and bloody abdominal fluid were post-mortem artifacts? is it possible she bled out into her IP cavity around the time of death, and the rest of the paleness is a livor thing, with the blood having settled out of the tissue? the vast majority of my necropsy experience is with mice, and I've seen both things happen with them?

either way, thank you for posting.

 

[Kibaja]

that was very interesting! I appreciate both the pictures and the descriptions.

is it at all possible that her pale mucosa and bloody abdominal fluid were post-mortem artifacts? is it possible she bled out into her IP cavity around the time of death, and the rest of the paleness is a livor thing, with the blood having settled out of the tissue? the vast majority of my necropsy experience is with mice, and I've seen both things happen with them?

either way, thank you for posting.

Thank you for your response!

It is possible that the pale mucosa was due to hypostasis/suggillation which causes the livores you mentioned, but my only issue with that is that not all the lower-most organs contained a lot of blood. Or any, even. I don't have a picture of it, but for example the thin intestines and stomach were completely anemic, despite being positioned under the liver, and since hypostasis works on the basis of gravity making blood drain to lower parts of the body once circulation stops it goes against the principle.

Honestly the results confused me quite a bit, and left more questions than answers, but oh well. I'm glad people are at least finding it educational.

 

[MauricesExoticPets]

Excellent job on the necropsy, and the write up. I'm sorry for your loss.

Could you elaborate on the feeder care situation, exact type of Repashy diet used and its expiration date?

Maurice Pudlo

 

[Aimless]

that makes perfect sense.

I wonder if she had leukemia or some other heme illness?

 

[Kibaja]

Excellent job on the necropsy, and the write up. I'm sorry for your loss.

Could you elaborate on the feeder care situation, exact type of Repashy diet used and its expiration date?

Maurice Pudlo

I gutload feeder insects with an array of vegetables for their different mineral/vitamin contents, and feed my geckos insects/repashy in roughly daily intervals.

I'm not sure of the exact expiration date of the Repashy, as I bought it in a bag and transferred the contents to a jar (I've found in the past the the bags aren't all that air tight despite the ziplock). But I bought it at a show (EXOTICA St. Polten - Austria) October last year from a reputable breeder, so it should still be good, I figure?
I'll be buying a new bag at the start of March though at the same show, just to be safe.

 

[hdavidf309]

Jusy out of curiosity.....
What was the age/weight of BOTH male and female Chahoua?
(If anything) have you made any progress in figuring it out since this post?
I am very sorry for your loss.....I know how it feels to lose M. Chahoua from past experience. Even though you walk away learning from it, the "hit" hurts pretty bad. M. Chahoua are among the most awesome and intelegent animals I have ever come across. EVER!

 

[Kibaja]

Jusy out of curiosity.....
What was the age/weight of BOTH male and female Chahoua?
(If anything) have you made any progress in figuring it out since this post?
I am very sorry for your loss.....I know how it feels to lose M. Chahoua from past experience. Even though you walk away learning from it, the "hit" hurts pretty bad. M. Chahoua are among the most awesome and intelegent animals I have ever come across. EVER!

They were about 2 weeks difference in age according to the breeder I got them from. So the age should be around 19 months (the male being slightly younger). The weight of the female was 41g when she died, since she was starting to regain weight from her first clutch (she was around 46g at the start of the first ovulation). The male is currently 52g, but he's been refusing food since the female died, and I'm starting to get rather worried about him too, but we'll see.

I haven't made much progress, but I talked to a few vets to get their input on it. I'll be going over it with my pathology professor on Thursday, so I'll see what he'll have to say then. But for the most part the vets I've talked to believe it was from liver failure, possibly due to the Panacour they were getting for the Oxyurids they had. I'm not too sure if this is the case or not, since I highly doubt they got an OD. The vet suggested I keep the doses to a minimal in order to avoid it, and the female didn't really show any clinical signs of intoxication prior. I'll be heading back to the clinic to talk to him and see if he can tell me how intoxication with Panacour usually proceeds so I can compare it with my results. If the male I have now ends up passing away with the same necropsy results, it'll most likely be the case, but I'm sincerely hoping it was something else. :/

I've also become rather suspicious of the batch of Repashy I've been giving them, since it was causing diarrhea with my baby Leachie, which improved when I took her off it and switched her to insects (though this could simply be because the food was runny and hence the feces too, especially since the chewies didn't have any issues with diarrhea once I got rid of the internal parasites). I'm considering going to my Pathology of Nutrition prof to ask if I can do some testing for mycotoxins with it and see if it could have been the source of intoxication just for sure though. If I end up going through it I'll write a little report on that too.

And I agree with you 100% that Chahouas are fantastic geckos. Them and leachies are my absolute favorites, and a real joy to work with.

 

[hdavidf309]

IMO (not to be confrontational) your Chahoua were too young to be breeding. It is aid that you should give Chahoua (especially PI) 2.5-3 years to mature before breeding then, regardless of weight....and quite frankly at the weights thatthey are/were at they were underweight for breeding to begin with anyway. For future reference, i would definately wait until fully mature and breed at a minimum of 57 grams for a female with a male being around the same weight.
Did you ever think that maybe it was from stress due to breeding too early?
Egg laying for a mature/healthy Chahoua is stressful enough, given the amount of calcium needed to suppliment for egg laying, so a younger gecko could have suffered too much stress especially if eggs were laid early and/or she hadn't had "re-coop time" and been separated. Calcium deficiencies and stress are HUGE in this species. I am not saying this was what caused it, but rather an observation and just to give advice. I hope you do not take what i say the wrong way and i would be happy to know what your professor has to say about it. Again, you have my sympathy and its trial and error with geckos. I hope your male pulls through as well.
OH....also were you using the new (3.0) CGD, or the old stuff?
ALSO....if you used the 3.0, have you just transitioned to that mixture (from the old stuff)?

 

[Kibaja]

IMO (not to be confrontational) your Chahoua were too young to be breeding. It is aid that you should give Chahoua (especially PI) 2.5-3 years to mature before breeding then, regardless of weight....and quite frankly at the weights thatthey are/were at they were underweight for breeding to begin with anyway. For future reference, i would definately wait until fully mature and breed at a minimum of 57 grams for a female with a male being around the same weight.
Did you ever think that maybe it was from stress due to breeding too early?
Egg laying for a mature/healthy Chahoua is stressful enough, given the amount of calcium needed to suppliment for egg laying, so a younger gecko could have suffered too much stress especially if eggs were laid early and/or she hadn't had "re-coop time" and been separated. Calcium deficiencies and stress are HUGE in this species. I am not saying this was what caused it, but rather an observation and just to give advice. I hope you do not take what i say the wrong way and i would be happy to know what your professor has to say about it. Again, you have my sympathy and its trial and error with geckos. I hope your male pulls through as well.
OH....also were you using the new (3.0) CGD, or the old stuff?
ALSO....if you used the 3.0, have you just transitioned to that mixture (from the old stuff)?

Heya, I agree with your observation fully. I should have separated them, but pretty much the reason I didn't/couldn't was my parents who don't entirely support my hobby (or rather, just accuse me of 'complicating things' when I want to get larger/more cages for my animals. Basically on the lines of 'they're the same species, they can live together'). It's not a matter of not having space for the animals I own, or financial even, just a matter of living under a roof of someone who still believes reptiles should be kept on the lines of goldfish. :/ I have brought this up with them though, so they've laid off considerably now so it definitely won't happen again in the future.

But while it's true that the female was very young, she didn't show any distinct signs of stress before she passed. There was no breeding aggression, or dominance on part of the male that I saw. If anything the female seemed more dominant in the cage. She was eating/drinking/normally active again as soon as she laid her first clutch. She also remained calm when handled (though I didn't do it much as not to bug her), but she definitely wasn't flighty or fidgety when I reached into the cage or anything on those lines. Which is why I believe the cause was more on the lines of liver/system failure than stress.

She definitely didn't have a calcium deficit though. I had x-rays done as soon as I caught her first ovulation and her reserves in both the calcium sacks and skeleton were good (I can see if I can get my hands on the xray photos again, since the uni kept them as course material. If I get them, I'll post them here). I also gave her booster doses every few days with Repashy RescueCal when the sacks started looking slightly smaller. The sacks were large in the necropsy as well, and the bones were good consistency, so the reserves were good.

As for the Repashy, I'm not sure because as I mentioned in a post before I moved it into a jar because the bag didn't seem all that air tight to me. I got it from a good breeder of cresties/leachies though, and while I definitely don't want to point fingers or accuse anyone of anything, I'd rather not give names. I'll be getting a new batch at a show next week so I'll make sure to get the newer stuff.

And no worries about any hard feelings or anything, I gladly accept criticism/observation if it's constructive.

 

[hdavidf309]

I'm glad to hear that you took that the right way and that you are understanding. on gnat same note, i am understanding too that there are people out there (aka-parents) that do not understand the complexitries of owning some of the species that require certain "added care". I am just sad that it happened to be the demise of a precious gecko. the truth is that no matter how controversial, Chahou 9both locales) have bred young and had no problems in the past, both in captivity and in the wild. Although I do not think stress alone was the cause...it probably didn't help.....although you do ohave a good point that if she seemed well, she may very well have been. to that note, find out what your professor says and let me 9and everyone) know so that we can learn along side you. honestly, it sounds like you are a completely fitting and competant breeder who CARES about the care of her animals as many serious collectors/breeders do. I will commend you for that. Just seems to have been a "bad incident" and that sucks.
as far as the Diet is concered, The new stuff gave my new Caledonian species' the runs for like a week when i made the transition, and there are many people whom say that hapened to them. On that same note, i will go ahead and say that Allen's new(er) CGD recipe far exceeds the original and I have nothing but great things to say....so 3.0! Haha. take care and fill us in on everything!
Dave