Why geckos stop eating

Most can be resolved with appropriate care or a quick trip to the exotic vet. Some, however, are tougher to handle. The number one reason why leopard geckos stop eating is that they are too cold. Perhaps your heat bulb burned out, perhaps the heat mat stopped working, perhaps there's a draft going into the cage, or maybe you never had a heat source for your leopard gecko and now it's just gotten too cold.

The change of seasons from fall to winter often brings a lot of anorexic geckos into the animal clinic, but, more often than not, a simple fix to their environmental temperature will make them start eating again. If your leopard gecko's metabolic rate is decreased due to temperatures dropping below 70 degrees Fahrenheit then it will most likely stop eating.

Supplemental heat is necessary if you don't keep the room where your gecko is located around 80 degrees Fahrenheit, and not many people keep their homes this warm. A heat mat works well but will not warm the air as well as it does the cage flooring, so it is hard to monitor what temperature it is where your gecko is sitting. It is much better and more cost-effective to have a simple heat light on the enclosure.

This way you can properly monitor the basking temperature and make sure it isn't getting too cold in your leopard gecko's cage at night. If your leopard gecko hasn't defecated recently, it may be impacted with fecal matter. This fecal impaction could be due to a recent large or hard meal your leopard gecko ate, such as super worms, or from bedding material that was accidentally ingested.

Urate plugs can also cause a blockage of fecal matter. If your gecko is having these problems, try soaking it in a warm water bath twice a day. The water should be deep enough to cover your gecko's hips. While your gecko is submerged, you should gently massage its belly. If that doesn't help your gecko pass their stool and urates, you should take your gecko to a vet.

Your vet may need to administer an enema to your leopard gecko, or they may discover it has intestinal parasites or needs other medical attention. If your leopard gecko recently got a chill from a draft or had a decrease in their environmental temperature, it could have a respiratory infection that has caused them to stop eating.

Respiratory infections are common in reptiles and can cause one to lose its appetite. If your leopard gecko is sick in some other way, there may be a different reason for their inappetence.

Your exotics vet can diagnose growths that affect or block the intestinal tract, mouth ulcerations, and other ailments. We were able to assist him in shedding his hood with some moist paper towels and now he can see, but he is very thin. We are frost time gecko owners but we are proud parents of a corn snake and ball python. Any advice on how to fatten this little guy up? Waxworms are really high in fat, but can be addictive so only feed them occasionally.

But otherwise a high and balanced diet with a few types of insects would be most helpful! You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Google account. You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email. Notify me of new posts via email. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Skip to content Twitter Instagram WordPress.

January 30, leopardgecko. Has their environment changed? What substrate are they being kept on? What temperature is their thermostat set to?

Does your leopard gecko have parasites? Putting down some paper towel where they poop is an easy way to collect the faeces. Make sure you quarantine your gecko from other reptiles if they have parasites.

Are you cohabiting leopard geckos? Has your leopard gecko just shed? But if this continues, you will want to take your gecko to a reptile vet. Bad sheds can be painful to them. Multiple bad sheds one after another could cause a condition in which the geckos become unable to shed the skins on their own.

The dry skins will layer on top of each other, constricting the gecko. The sheds dry up and get stuck in their eyes, ears, nose, also sometimes on their toes and tail. Stuck sheds in their eyes can cause blindness, so you have to help them when you notice stuck sheds in their eye.

Take a moist q-tip and gently rub around the eye and slowly peel the skin off. You can also use a sterile eye saline solution to help loosen the skin in tough situations. Stuck shed on the toes could cut off the circulation of their toes, causing the toes to eventually fall off.

Same with the tail, if the tail is constricted by dry shed for too long, especially when there are multiple layers of it, it could result in tail loss. The gecko below our Radar male Kronos had access to a moist hide, but he still had a rough time shedding one day. He had shed stuck in his eyes and ears. There were also excessive shed stuck on his hind feet and tail. When leopard geckos first reach sexual maturity, their behavior may change.

Males could reach sexual maturity as early as 6 months old, while females usually reach sexual maturity at around months. You usually would notice your male becoming territorial for the first time, while your female may get a tad more skittish because they are ovulating for the first time. This is a normal cycle every young leopard gecko goes through.

Once leopard geckos reach adulthood 1 year old , their bodies will start functioning on a more seasonal schedule.

During these months, your adult leopard geckos could go through breeding heat. Your females will ovulate, your males might get restless and want to come out of the tank all the time.

They could stop eating for weeks at a time, sometimes even months. Your ovulating females will usually only eat in between ovulation cycles. For us breeders, females will eat in between clutches. Males during this time usually will eat some here and there, but not much at all.

They could go off food for weeks and months at a time as well. This may be alarming for new leopard gecko owners, but it is all normal. Every time one of my geckos stopped eating I would get nervous and stressed. But after a couple of seasons, I learned about their cycles. So for new leopard gecko owners, remember if you have a young gecko, you will experience this when your gecko first reach sexual maturity. Then once they become adults, they will follow a seasonal breeding cycle as described above.

They can be located as high as their stomach, towards the middle of their abdomen. Or they could be near the lower left and right sides of their abdomen. Smaller round circles are ovum, they are female reproductive cells waiting to be fertilized.

They are usually developed just below their stomach. Then once fertilized, they are slowly moved towards the lower left and right sides of their abdomen. As the eggs develop and grow, they become more elongated. Note that females can develop eggs without a male fertilizing the ovum. When geckos fast over a breeding season, they will lose weight.

Losing a gram here and there every couple of weeks is normal for them during the breeding season. The reason for them to have a plump tail is so they can go through long periods without food. The fat stored inside their tail is used by their body when they are off food. Egg binding is a serious issue.

It can happen to female leopard geckos even if they are not being bred. This is because female leopard geckos can develop eggs without copulation. Dystocia means egg retention. It occurs when females are unable to pass eggs through their reproductive system. Egg binding happens most often to first-time breeders, females carrying infertile eggs, or females who had egg binding issues before source.

Female leopard geckos first reach sexual maturity between the age of months old. They will ovulate for the first time, and they could develop fertile eggs if bred, or infertile eggs without mating. If the female is malnourished, obese, dehydrated, stressed being housed with other geckos or disturbed often , or if the female was bred too young or too old, all could cause egg binding.

Furthermore, the lack of a proper laybox or laybox substrate could cause the female to hold on to the eggs. Since gravid females will often stop eating, this can be hard to detect.

But healthy gravid females should still be alert, active, they should still drink water, pass urates , shed properly, and perform normal daily activities. If you notice your female leopard gecko becoming lethargic, or she starts to shed excessively and having bad sheds. Or if she digs for long periods of time and you can visibly see her straining while raising her tail without passing eggs. These are all signs of her possibly being egg bound.