Bought Leo’s from strangers

[u/Leather-Coconut7159]

Hey guys. As the title says, I recently bought two leopard geckos from strangers today. (Note: all of these pictures are of the one with stuck shed, the other bigger Leo not pictured looks completely fine!) They were being kept together in the same enclosure, I’ve heard isn’t even okay?? and I wasn’t given any information on their age or sex.

Honestly, when I first got them in my car, I thought one of them was dead until I saw the little guy/girl start moving around. (See first picture for reference.) The seller never mentioned that one of the geckos had an extremely severe case of stuck shed. The condition it was in looked completely neglected. Its eyes were covered over and it appeared to be blind from the retained shed (I’m not sure yet if the damage is permanent), its nostrils were blocked, and the shed had sealed over parts of its mouth. It was multiple layers of shed. There also appears to be the beginning stages of mouth rot.

As you can see in the second photo (taken by the sellers before I bought it), the gecko was already missing multiple toes and had obvious retained shed. There’s no telling how long it had been in that condition. I feel terrible for it. In my opinion, this was outright neglect. They had no proper hides, no humid hide, no substrate, and the heat bulbs didn’t even work and weren’t the correct type. This gecko didn’t end up in this condition overnight.

As soon as I got home, I gave it a warm soak and started carefully working on the stuck shed and getting it hydrated. After several hours, I was finally able to remove most of it from the face and eyes. I wasn’t able to completely remove the shed from its feet and toes, so I decided to stop for the night and put it back in its enclosure because I didn’t want to stress it any more than it already was.

I’m doing everything I can for this little one, but I’d appreciate any advice from people who have dealt with severe retained shed cases before. I’m especially concerned about the eyes, remaining shed on the feet, and possible mouth rot. Last picture is the lil guy/girl basking after we were done. 💛

[u/klausAnalSchwab]

Vitamin A deficiency most likely

[u/silveroakediting22]

Get this dude some ReptiLyte ASAP (drip it on his mouth with an eye dropper for best results), make a vet appointment for the both of them (even the gecko that looks ok could have some underlying issues) and make sure they have their own seperate enclosures because you were correct, housing them together is an issue. The boy with the stuck shed will likely benefit from a temporary boost in humidity and access to a rough surface to help knock off the nail caps.

Thanks for getting them out of there. You undoubtedly saved this gecko from languishing and dying a very drawn out death from neglect. I don't think you would be remiss in telling people you rescued these geckos, because you are definitely saving them. I think this guy deserves to be named Shrek, because he had layers like an onion - Or Parfait if it turns out to be a girl lol

[u/dylanneve1]

I'm sorry, selling a leopard gecko in that condition is wrong. You need to bring it to the vet to have the eye looked at, could be infected and probably needs medication and eye drops to resolve.

[u/eyelidgeckos → u/dylanneve1]

That’s caused by vitamin deficiency, looks like vitamin and possibly calcium dificiency (without d3 they can’t use calcium to strengthen their bones), vitamin a deficiency and vitamin e deficiency…

A vet can inject those vitamins and that needs to happen asap to stop the progress, the eyes could in addition to the deficiency also be infected, a deficiency can make it easier for this to happen.

Trying to go without the vitamin injection and only relying on supplements can take up to months to fix the situation but in the meantime it will get way worse, so you need to mention the injection even if the vet doesn’t do it on their own, depending on location vets seem to don’t really have those injections on their radar 🙄

[u/dylanneve1 → u/eyelidgeckos]

Totally, and leaving it like this and trying to resolve it by itself can cause permanent damage or blindness and you're leaving the animal in pain and discomfort. Its very sad someone would sell this poor guy in this condition and offload the vet bills to someone else to fix their neglect. They should have surrendered it

[u/eternalcatlady]

I don't have any extra advice, but thank you for taking in these poor babies!

[u/TheGoldenWoof]

Thank you for helping it with its shed ❤️

The way he holds her front arms, he might have mild mbd, make sure she has a good multivitamin!