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Help! Pregnant Oblongonota Is Dying?


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A favorite of mine has been pregnant now for a few months and was doing the usual heavy "breathing" that pregnant ladies do when they start to get large.  For those of you who don't know what I mean it's a rhythmic movement every 10 seconds or so where the roach is pushing air out of her spiracles sort of "manually" because of the stress of the pregnancy.

 

She had her hatch in the back open quite wide as well but recently in the past few days she has been comatose to the point that when I pick her up she makes no attempt to grab onto me with her legs.  Hissers always do this but not she doesn't.  Her legs are also kind of flat and bowed out to the point that she doesn't bend them when she does move so mobility is difficult.  

 

I'm really worried about her.  I haven't seen behavior like this before.  

 

I tried to upload photos but no matter how much I cropped them the site is telling me they are too big.

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I thought I would add one more symptom I have noticed.

 

She feels limp when I pick her up as if she can't use any of her muscles kind of like a rag doll.  This ends up making her feel rather soft to the touch instead of more firm the way they usually feel.  

 

As I said she does move her legs and antennae somewhat so she isn't paralysed and she does move across the enclosure.  Her movement is just slow and labored.  

 

This particular girl isn't old and she has all of her tarsi on her legs.

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Hmm, I really don't know why she is exhibiting these symptoms, sounds like she is dying unfortunately. :( Sometimes female hissers die off before getting to the point where their tarsi fall off from old age, especially when in a fairly large colony. Think it might have to do with the stress of giving birth, IDK. I'd keep her isolated from the others and give her her own small enclosure, keep her warm, well fed and watered, and hope for the best.

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Huh, that is really weird, I haven't had any hissers do that before. Did you wash all fruits and veggies you fed them? Is there a chance she was exposed to any harmful chemicals or pesticides? She seems rather plump, normally old, dying hissers are fairly skinny...

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I haven't had any behavior like this in my colony on the part of anyone else.  If it were pesticide wouldn't others exhibit this behavior too?

 

I have experience with pesticide death when I gave a male Oblongonota some apple.  It was peeled and washed but he ended up having convulsions, dark liquid fluid coming out of his bum that may have been diarrhea and then of course ultimately death.  That happened much faster and my girl here has had no convulsions or discharge.  

 

I think this is pregnancy related ?

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Yeah, I guess that's true, the others would exhibit symptoms too probably.

I don't know why it would be pregnancy related, if there was something wrong with the pregnancy itself she'd probably have aborted her ootheca already. 

Sorry I can't be of more help, I really hope your girl comes back from this!

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On 12/21/2017 at 7:01 PM, aoikirin said:

:((( I'm really sad she was my favorite.  Thank you for your help :)

Keep us updated on her condition, I hope she gets better!

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On 12/23/2017 at 11:16 AM, aoikirin said:

I decided to put her in the freezer because she was suffering so.

I'm going to do an autopsy and try to see if she was indeed pregnant after all 

Thanks again for your help 

Ah well, sorry to hear that, hopefully she's at peace now. :unsure: 

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