Can Babies choke and die on food?

[chazthaking2]

I was kinda curious as to why people dont feed their babies larger foods? Can they die from it?

 

[acpart]

I have never had a choking and dying experience with geckos, but have had these 2 experiences:

Quite a few years ago I had a new and very young gecko I'd gotten from a petstore. One evening I fed it some larger crickets and the next day there were regurgitated pieces of cricket all over the cage.

I have hatchling banded geckos that are very tiny when young (they are about the length of a quarter when they're born) and it's a challenge to find crickets that are small enough. I fed some of my smaller ones a few crickets that were a little too big and once again I found regurgitated crickets.

It's really amazing what these guys can swallow --I've seen it with the banded who are very determined. But I guess if it's too big, it comes back up and that's not so good in the nutrition department.

Aliza

 

[chazthaking2]

I have had that same situation happen to me twice as well but the weird thing about that is I have had a gecko that was smaller that ate the same size crickets and she is still just fine. Any more opinions?

 

[GeckoNub]

I havent had any die (touch wood) from feeding items that were a little bigger than i would have liked, they dont seem to care about perfect size its just BANG and down

Although some of the slightly longer mealworms i have fed to my babies have taken a bit of swallowing down. They seem to make their throat a bit puffed out, but they kinda twist a bit and it goes down

I have tried telling Maggie the slightly bigger worms arent for her but she is a greedy little thing and eats whatever moves

 

[ajveachster]

Pretty much you might get regurgitation problems. It's just like when you vomit. You aren't getting the nutrients in you, there is always a slight risk of injury with vomiting and it is just not pleasant.

 

[Alliemac]

I've seen an iguana choke before but not a gecko.

 

[chazthaking2]

So what could the regurgitating be from then?

 

[Double D]

I had a couple beardies several years back. It was a baby I fed them small crix one morning I threw in some small crix came back an hour or so later and one of them had a cric hanging half out of its mouth and has DOA. It looked like it struggled around a bit too. So I have always assumed it chocked on the cricket. Not no CSI investegater but that was my conclusion.

 

[Cammyron]

So what could the regurgitating be from then?

perhaps its not how big the crickets are, rather how many you feed them. four or five a day should be a rough number to feed your gecko.

i've also heard that small gecko's are greedy little buggers and will eat until they make themselves sick. then they realise it's not a very pleasant experience, and in future eat until they are full.

 

[Tanga]

I haven't been a keeper of leopard geckos for very long (only about 5 years now), but in these years I have yet to see a leo die from choking on feeders that were too large for them to handle. I've had a 25 gram leo take down a full grown dubia roach with no ill effects.

 

[Alusdra]

I've never head of choking, but there is a greater chance of regurgitation as others have said, as well as not being able to get it in the proper position to swallow it in the first place. If that happens they will give up and you have a dead bug and a grumpy gecko that won't try again for a good while (I call it 'pouting'). They can snap up a bunch of smaller feeders easier.

Ditto on having a 20-ish gram gecko take down full grown dubias.