BLUE TONGUE SKINKS

Ok so I was dosing me female IJ with Panacur, I use a soft rubber spatula to open her mouth (as per the vets reccomendation) so I don't damage any tissue. She was extra huffy yesterday so my wife held her while I opened her mouth up and squirted the medecine in. Well as I was getting ready to pull the syringe and spatula out she jerked sideways and clamped her mouth shut on the plastic syringe tip. She bit hard enough to pinch the tip shut, Some of the excess panacur came out the side and it was slightly pink. I opened her mouth up one more time and the back gum line had a little bit of blood. I wiped her clean as best I could and left her be. At the end of the day I checked on her again...There was ZERO swelling, i could touch her jaw and she didn't react, and I opened her mouth, there wasn't any blood and her mouth was pink uniformly through out. That being said, should I continue to monitor, hold off on feeding etc, clean any loose substrate off her mouth or am I just being paranoid? Thanks.

Just being paranoid
It never hurts to keep an extra eye on things and keeping even just small injury sites clean, but mine have done the same thing many times and have never had any issues from it.

Susann wrote:Just being paranoid
It never hurts to keep an extra eye on things and keeping even just small injury sites clean, but mine have done the same thing many times and have never had any issues from it.

Thats a relief! When the vet was showing me how to administer oral medication he said "be very careful that they don't bit the plastic, they can cause permanent damage to themselves due to their powerful jaws" I was thinking great here we go.

Mouth injuries due to biting hard things is a definite possibility-seen a few on this forum but they are usually just dents and probably just cosmetic issues.

I had one Northern who insisted rocks were eggs and tried cracking/eating them-I wonder if she broke a few teeth in the process before I got the rock back! But no issues whatsoever.

critterguy wrote:Mouth injuries due to biting hard things is a definite possibility-seen a few on this forum but they are usually just dents and probably just cosmetic issues.

I had one Northern who insisted rocks were eggs and tried cracking/eating them-I wonder if she broke a few teeth in the process before I got the rock back! But no issues whatsoever.

Rocks?! Thats insane...this didn't even leave a dent or any visual marking, I just saw the blood and freaked because I thought I hurt her...but, she is chomping away at food right now and I was touching her mouth and she didn't jerk, roll, or pull away. I'm going to keep an eye on it, but if I don't see swelling then I assume all is good. I'm just a paranoid pet owner...

Something that has worked for me to avoid mouth damage by the animal biting down on the syringe is to attach an inch or so of soft tubing to the syringe tip. IV tubing softened in hot water forms a tight fit for the tip of smaller syringes. This allows the body of the syringe to stay outside the mouth and if a bite occurs it is only to soft tubing rather than the hard plastic syringe.

Try to slowly push down on the plunger rather than a fast squirt as this can project the liquid deep into the mouth cavity with the possibility of aspiration. Likewise, administering fluids across the tongue rather than along also reduces risk of aspiration.

El Lobo wrote:Something that has worked for me to avoid mouth damage by the animal biting down on the syringe is to attach an inch or so of soft tubing to the syringe tip. IV tubing softened in hot water forms a tight fit for the tip of smaller syringes. This allows the body of the syringe to stay outside the mouth and if a bite occurs it is only to soft tubing rather than the hard plastic syringe.

Try to slowly push down on the plunger rather than a fast squirt as this can project the liquid deep into the mouth cavity with the possibility of aspiration. Likewise, administering fluids across the tongue rather than along also reduces risk of aspiration.

That is an awesome idea!!! I will grab some tygon tubing from work. Thank you!

Mine tried to eat a brick a while ago. He has no apparent issues

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=24343&p=441892&hilit=brick#p441892

I used to feed a gecko of mine from a syringe -- they make soft rubber nipples to go on the end. Might be worth a shot if you haven't tried that already.

saisaac wrote:Mine tried to eat a brick a while ago. He has no apparent issues

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=24343&p=441892&hilit=brick#p441892

Ok so one is trying to eat a brick, the other tries to eat rocks. I guess a plastic syringe tip isn't that big of a deal. haha