How to keep a skink from hurting itself

[Coolcar91]

Hello! I was watching Gimli again today, and I noticed that there was a bit of blood on one of the woodchips in his enclosure. I looked at his foot, and one of his nails was missing. I’ll attach a picture, but it’s similar to the way his toe was cut a week or two ago. That nail ended up dropping off too-these are the only toes where it’s happened, thankfully. The new injury is his toe farthest from his body on his right back foot, and the old one is on the middle toe in that same foot. He’s never had a problem like this until that post a couple weeks ago, and his nails aren’t that long-I haven’t ever cut them, but since I changed his substrate to cypress mulch they’ve been short enough that I haven’t needed to. I have no idea how he’s doing this to himself. He’s been super active lately and doesn’t seem to be in any pain at all(he’s walking around right now as I write) but he’s definitely hurting himself. He also keeps climbing on the decorations in his enclosure, none of which are more than 5 inches high, and most of the time he’s actually very graceful when coming down. Sometimes, though, he slides off very awkwardly, and lands with a thump on his substrate. He doesn’t seem to have hurt himself like this yet, unless this is how he’s ripping out his nails somehow…Does anyone have any ideas on how else he could be hurting his nails, or how I could stop it? Also if I need to prevent him from climbing so much? I would hate to do it because he loves it a lot, but if I need to of course I will. Any help would be greatly appreciated!!! I’ll attach pictures of the injury and of my enclosure setup in case it will help. I think he’s hurting his nails in his enclosure, because that’s where I saw the blood and I think I would have noticed if he had gotten hurt outside the enclosure. Thank you so much!!

[Y33T]

Has he been able to reach the mesh lid? I have heard of nails being ripped out when an animal climbs on mesh.

[Coolcar91]

Hmm, I hadn’t thought of that. He could definitely reach the lid if he put his mind to it. I haven’t seen him reaching up there, but I’ll check and see if there’s evidence on the lid, and watch to see if he does it. Thanks for the advice!! If that is what he’s doing, is there any way I can get him to stop? He can reach the lid from the ground-he’s 22 inches long and the substrate is only a foot from the lid.

[Y33T]

I’m not really sure. Only thing I could think of is to maybe give him an upgrade? Being nearly 2ft long and in I assume a 3ft Exo Terra your boy could use some extra space. For a skink his size I recommend getting or building a 4x2x18 or 4x2x2. One of my easterns who is also just as huge was like that, loves climbing every inch and even up onto the mesh and now he almost never does it once given more space.

[Coolcar91]

Good to know!! I actually was planning on building him a new enclosure, but it’s been really hard to find clear PVC big enough to make the walls(which I’ve read is the best material to use, feel free to correct me if I’m wrong!) I would love for him to have more space, and it’s coming-and I’m glad that might help!! I saw him climbing up towards the mesh today, so I think that is probably how he’s doing it. In the meantime until I can get him a bigger enclosure, any suggestions on how to discourage him from hurting himself? Thank you!!

[Coolcar91]

Also-this is a bit off topic but as long as I’m here-if you have any suggestions on where I could get big enough PVC(5’ by 4’ by 1/4’ at least), that would really, really be appreciated!!

[Y33T]

Awesome! For the mean time try letting him out more, interact with him or redecorate/add new decor as much possible, it should hopefully distract him a little bit.
I also looked up Home Depot and they have a 8ft x 4ft sheet of white PVC.

[Hazel]

How is your skink doing these days.

This is the 4x2x2 enclosure we got from Dubiaroaches.com the shelves were extra of course.