Hi guys.  Welcome back to Animal Wonders.  I'm Jessi and this is Bindi the bearded dragon.  He's mad at me right now and you can tell that because he has a dark throat.  He's mad because he thinks I'm going to give him a bath and he's right.

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The reason Bindi needs a bath right now is because, well, it's good for him.  He's having issues with his femoral pores and let me tell you what femoral pores are.  They're located on the underside of the thighs.  You can see these bumps or holes right there, and they go right above the vent.  Bearded dragons use their femoral pores to spread around their pheremones.  They secrete a waxy liquid that they rub on rocks to mark their territory or send signals to females during breeding season.

Bindi's femoral pores are a problem because they became clogged because he can't move around as well as he should be able to.  Bindi has metabolic bone disease and his bones in his arms have become fused together so he can't climb and walk around and rub his femoral pores on things like he normally would be able to, so I have to help him, and I want to show you how I do it.

It's important to regularly check up on your bearded dragon's femoral pores because if they do become impacted, they can get a big infection and then that infection could go systemic and it will lead to their death, so you do need to keep up on this and make sure that the femoral pores are not getting clogged and they're looking pretty healthy.  

First, I want to turn the water on and you want it to be warm.  Hi, buddy, I know.  He knows that this bath is coming and he doesn't like it.  Alright, so you're gonna make it nice and warm, not hot to the touch, so what I'm going to try and do is soften up the secretions in his femoral pores so, and make sure that the infection doesn't get worse than it is, so I've been working with my vet for this procedure and I'm gonna let him soak in this water for a little bit.  

So if you put your bearded dragon down in there and they start moving around like you saw Bindi do a little bit, you want to wait and see what the level is for when they relax.  You want the water to be over their thighs, just up to their thighs right there, so that their femoral pores are completely submerged, 'cause that is what you want to be loosening up, getting nice and warm.  

I'm gonna let him sit in there for about 10-15 minutes so it really starts to relax and get loosened up before I start working on it.  So the next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to take a cleaning solution.  Because Bindi's impaction was pretty severe, I'm going to use some benzyl peroxide and that's vet recommended, so I will have to turn him on his back for a little bit.  You want to be careful with bearded dragons because they cannot breathe on their back and you don't want to hold them there too long.  I'm gonna use a soft baby toothbrush and put some of this on here.  Alright, bud, this is the worst part.  Okay, put him on his back, I know, shh, shh, shh, shh, and I'm just going to gently scrub it in there.  

Alright, I'm going to give him a break.  You can see he's quite upset by this.  This is not your idea of a good time.  Here I go, we're gonna go again.  Nice and gentle.  Alright, that's good.  You don't have to get in there, you don't have to be rough.  I'm going to fill this up again, I'm gonna kind of let him soak and then reach underneath his legs and just rub that off and I don't want it to get in his eyes or his mouth, so now I want to make sure that this continues to soften, so as he does walk around, any secretions that come out of there will stay loose and they won't get too hard because you want to make sure that it doesn't get impacted again.  So I'm going to take some Neosporin, again, you can use different products.  Neosporin is nice because it is very oily and is gonna stick on there, stay on there for a long time.  You can use coconut oil for this as well.

Alright, we're done in here, Bindi.  Does that make you happy?  No, he's still angry.  We're gonna go put him back in his warm enclosure.  Alright, here you go, buddy.  Up into your basking light.  Thank you for letting me share how I'm keeping Bindi happy and healthy.  If you guys have any questions, you can leave them in the comment section below, and if you would like to go on an adventure with us every week, subscribe to our YouTube channel AnimalWondersMontana.  Thanks, guys.

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