New Hatchling Health Problem

I was gifted two healthy eggs from a pair of new geckos; my first gecko eggs, although not my first geckos. I incubated them at about 80 degrees. There was a rocky time when we were moving homes and the eggs got jostled. One egg quickly lost its pink colour, shrunk, turned orange, got stinky, and molded so I threw it out. The other stayed veiny red and continued to grow so I kept it. It finally hatched literally at the 90 day mark. The baby gecko looked large and healthy (3.25" long I'd guess). I set it up in a 2 gallon tank for starters with heat, paper towel substrate, shallow water dish, moist hide, and dry hide. The next morning it looked terrible. It had mostly molted, but the skin on its upper arms shrunk into tight bands that were cutting off circulation, its arms were a sickly purple colour. Its back legs were stuck to its belly- it looked as though yolk dried and its toes got stuck up in the crust. The baby was listless. VERY very gently I worked the skin from the arms with tweezers and loosened the toes from the belly (not removing any crusted goo). Semi-normal colour returned to the limbs almost immediately, but today (24 hours later) they are still very red and bruised looking. It walks on its knees and elbows. Its legs are curled up to its body tightly and will not extend. I am at the 48 hour mark, so I don't know if it will gain strength and normality, or if I can help in some way... It's a little more active, although very docile. Doesn't seem to flinch or shy away from anything, neither me nor the tweezers. I would assume that's bad. I expected a newborn to be jittery and shy. Am I experiencing normality as an over-concerned, under-experienced parent, or is there something very wrong? Thank you in advance.

Current image. The front leg you can see is still curled and very red. This was the one with the tight skin band above the elbow. The other arm had no shed issues, but is held the same. The legs do not move at the shoulders or hips. It "wriggles" around like a snake.

poor little baby i don't have any experience in breeding but i don't think this little one will make it.... something seems to have happened to the poor little thing and with out use of its limbs im not sure how long it will live or if what has caused this to happen will cause other things to go wrong with it. if i were you i would just do my best to take care of it while it lives. im sorry with the skin that is still stuck i would try using some distilled water on a Q-tip and soaking the bad skin with the water to see if you can get it to be loose, but other then that i cant think of anything else you could do. let us know how it turns out.

Well it seems very strong despite the impairment. It is bright eyed and and doesn't display signs of upset or stress, although still very listless. I am keeping close watch for now. I have read that temperature fluctuations during incubation can cause deformities. I hope the move didn't upset it that badly... I don't know, this little one may manage if it's determined.

Its seems like a severely deformed or damaged hatchling. It could be from the move, or it could be that it wasn't supplied with enough calcium from the mother when the egg was laid and so its bone's are weak and soft.

Supply it with plenty of calcium and its all usual needs. You could try getting any stuck skin off, but ultimately i hate to say that it may be a cull situation.

It's important to remember these things happen due to no fault of any one person, animal, thing etc. It seems most likely just a deformity, due to any number of factors that could had gone wrong with mother. If you are upset and blaming yourself, try not to. In fact, DON'T. You are doing all you can, and you will have plenty of breeding success in the future. Keep us posted!

I'm not terribly upset. I have many rescued and adopted geckos; one with a malformed useless eye, one with a bad front leg, two who've had their tails ripped of by screaming children so many times that they wield bloated 1" nubs. It's a rag-tag gang of survivors. Today the little guy is still bright and aware. The back legs are being used slightly but the fronts are still severely curled.

I hate to be the voice of reason here but as deformed as those front legs are the chances of recovery are quite slim and the chances of actually being able to catch food like that is even less. Have you tried feeding this leo yet? Has it eaten? Nub tails, a damaged eye, even 1 bum front leg a leo can over come those deficits and live relatively healthy normal lives, but this one, a deformed as those legs are and the chances of recovery are very slim imo, and this baby should be culled. Being listless, depressed and not thriving are all indicators this leo has more going on than meets the eye. Better to cull now imo rather than trying a prolonged course of therapy just to have the poor thing starve to death because it can't catch food. If youre going to continue to breed you need to accept you can't save them all and will have to eventually cull. Imo this situation cries out for it. It's never easy, I've had to do it several times with my show rabbits, it's never easy but we have a responsibility to make sure as ethical breeders to only produce and propigate the best of the species we choose to work with and cull compromised or deformed animals.

Well today the little bugger was more active. Waddling about with his head up and looking strong. Using "he" although I don't know the gender yet. He ate a big fat dermestid larvae (I raise my own as well as mealworms and crickets). I made it tickle and crawl on his face until he got so fed up he attacked it, then he seemed to suddenly understand the concept of eating. He choked it down, basked in the warmth of my hand for a few minutes and then became very active. He's waddling about the tank right now, and actually moving quite fast. I will take it day by day. Should he backslide and seem to be incapable of eating and functioning, I won't make him suffer a miserable life. If he gets stronger and figures out how to get around properly then I'll be taking care of him.

Good luck with that... Sending good vibes that he can advance and have positive progress, eating certainly is a step in the right direction. I'd keep his temps really warm, 96-98*f to make sure he can properly digest easily. Please keep us updated.

He ate x3 .5" meal worms with calcium today. After the first one he just opened his mouth at the site of the tweezers and waited for me to put one in his mouth. He definitely has an appetite! I don't want to over-feed him though. He is much, much stronger today, and is using his limbs a little more than usual.

You really can't over feed babies. Give him all he wants with in reason, like don't give him 20 mealies our he may regurge, not good. Most babies know when to stop, some are gluttons and only learn after they regurge a couple times. Glad he has a good appetite, that's a good sign. Make sure he gets plenty of calcium and D3. Dust every feeding and hopefully it'll help those legs.

I tried another feeding today and he flatly refused. I assumed he'd had his fill for a while. I dusted all three mealworms yesterday, so hopefully he got some. His legs are almost coloured normal, there's just a slight band of bruising on the forarms. He's uncurled his hands and is using them "normally" now, but still will not unbend his limbs at the elbow or knee. Every time we have him out we gently stretch the limbs out and encourage movement. I'm cautiously eager to see how far his recovery progresses.

well good jobe for working so diligently with the poor little one, i hope everything works out and he will be able to heal enough to have a good life with you. ^_^

Well the little guy was doing great for the first week. He ate readily and moved around a lot, started to plump up a bit. Then he started molting again. He stopped moving, refused to eat- he'd actually spit the food out if I got it into his mouth. He got super skinny and died a few days later. I'm suppose his deformities were a little too much... I really had high hopes for a few days there! But I've been graced with two new eggs (AH!) so we'll see what happens next time. I'm discovering the Holiday surprises of keeping a male in with my females!

poor little one, at least he is not suffering anymore.

Sorry to hear ya lost the little one, you did a lot more trying to give him a chance than most would have. Hopefully something good comes from your holiday surprises.