Help with baby Indonesian Skink

[Sandlizard]

Hi, and a happy new year to all. This is my first post and I hope that anyone can forgive any mistakes I make. I was asked to look after my friends Indonesian Bluetongue skink on the 5th of december 2012. It was a wild caught one at 25-30cm, very fierce and unfriendly, hissing and biting when I reach for her, I minimized contact as she becomes very stressed. I feed her a diet of catfood, bean sprouts, bananas, grapes, water cress and hard boiled eggs. She very much prefers catfood I noticed. On the 30th of december she gave birth to 2 live baby bluetongue skink (one died later, couldn't swallow the eggsac and was weak)! Next day another 3 was born alive. the next 2 days, 3 stillborn was birthed. I now have 4 live baby skinks besides mom! I really want to give them the best that I have. I am housing the babies together in a tupperware feeding them with mince eggs, carrots and bananas. I noticed btw that indonesian skinks does not seems to have the bluetongue display as the Australian bluetongue which I am more familiar with when I was a student there.

[Fatal_S]

Hiya

Baby blue tongues can be treated as small-version of the adults. Same food, just cut up smaller, in smaller portions, fed daily. Water always available. I separate my babies from day one because I've had newborns attack each other, but some people keep the babies together for a while.

Eggs are an excellent food to start babies on. Then move to something like dogfood with mixed greens/veggies. And it's important to give them some extra calcium (with D3) since they'll be growing a lot.

[Sandlizard]

Thank you for the prompt reply. I have been doing quite a bit of reading up about the Bluetongue, I just bought some variety of dogfood and catfood to test how readily they like it. I intend to house the babies in a 20 gallon tank with sphagnum moss/leaf litter as a substrate, the moss is quite loose and almost like a soil like consistency, would that be an issue? Sphagnum moss has quite a low ph, but I can't imagine that it will affect them when it is relatively dry. I intend to add some fauna like springtails and isopod into the tank to help clean up, to make it more natural would that be okay? I have an almost free source of chicken liver for vitamin D3, I should mince it down to mix with food.

[Fatal_S]

Are you intending to keep all these babies? They can generally only be housed together for a week to maybe a month. They're not a social species.

Spaghnum moss is a fine substrate. It's used all the time here for moist hides for reptiles of all sorts. Personally though, I house all my babies on paper towel until I know they're healthy, eating well, growing, and pooping normally. Then I move to aspen shavings (or other suitable substrate).

I have no clue on the chicken liver part, hopefully someone smarter will chime in soon.

[Sandlizard]

I will be keeping one, mom and the rest will be returned when they are slightly bigger. A week you say, I will get more containers then, and paper towel, they seems so social able that I hoped they become intolerant until much later. Liver contains high level of vitamin D3, actually I read all the dog/cat food note that they are supplemented with vitamin D3 and calcium so i am not sure if I should dose extra... I probably will.

[Spindown]

awww little surprises! Thank goodness that most reptiles are fully functional and ready for independent life as soon as they clean up their yolk or hatch out. Be prepared, they grow FAST!!

[Sandlizard]

I have only one left :_( the other 3 died one after the other, I am at my wits end. Some of the symptoms are vomitting, urinating and defecation. I almost suspect some sort of food poisoning. One of them vomitted chopped egg white before expiring, I suspect that when they were born, they may have ingested some substrates (kitty litter) with their egg sacs, the first to die was the weakest one and certainly had substrates around the mouth when it died, The other 3 were eating well and I hoped that they will pull through, the one that died today was the strongest one, it was eating well only 2 days ago....

[kenn]

You cold do a necropsy? Or let the vet do it.. vomitting, diarhea,.. sounds like parasites.

Check faeces (or let vet do it if you don't have micrscope) for wormeggs, flagelates...
Goodluck

[Sandlizard]

The vet here knows nothing about reptiles! They won't treat it or autopsy it, but I will check the feces with a microscope, the baby skinks were only a few weeks old, i don't think the parasite load can kill them so fast. I feel very bad that they died under my charge. Strangely the only surviving skinklet was the runtiest one, it even has some slight deformity (doesn't carry its belly off the ground) I though at first it was MBD, but it just likes to spread its ribs out really wide on the floor.

[Linnea]

do you suspect a genetical isse?

[Spindown]

Just curious, why kitty litter? Are you talking about the clumping kind? That can cause impaction even in cats, so perhaps that is what occured here? Although I'm not sure i'f they would poop if they were impacted. Hopefully you are able to find out, this is very sad. Unfortunately, these things do happen, no matter what species or breed of animals one works with.