broken leg

I bought a new critter keeper for my T and when taking him out his hide broke a section of his leg it didn't break off but started oozing a greyish liquid and he can't put pressure on it what do I do?

MIKE where are you???

firstly... DONT PANIC!!!!

the liquid is hemoglymph (i might have spelled that wrong lol) which is tarantula blood

tarantula's have a pretty cool trick when it comes to broken limbs. I know at the beginning of the leg nearest the body they have this swish little valve. when a leg gets damaged this valve closes and the tarantula will just nip off the leg

the leg will grow back but if you have a sub adult male it probably wont grow back much for obvious reasons

however if you have a female or juvi this will no doubt grow back too it's full extent. we have had sever tarantula's who have damaged legs or have been bought with a gammy leg. and they are all fine.. in fact our male haplopelma sp. 'vietnam' mated with a gammy leg and a missing leg!

so all in all not a problem

it got broken near the end of the leg the furthest joint from his body. I feel soooooo bad and he's full grown I feel wretched he's never going to be the same is he?

Something like this happened with my rose hair. Her foot got damaged in a molt. if it's leaking fluid, you should probably amputate it for the better good of the spider. It's not too hard. You just need to grab the leg close to the body (somewhere within that first segment) and pull straight up. If that doesn't work, find a way to restrain the spider and pull the leg out. You'll see a bit of fluid leak from the joint on both the body and leg, but don't worry, the body side seals up pretty quickly, and don't freak out if the leg keeps twitching for a few minutes. lol

Personally I would let the tarantula decide whether it wants to amputate the leg or not! They are pretty good at sorting themselves out and can quite happily carry on with their lives with a gammy leg still in place. It certainly wont hinder it during hunting / feeding/ mating.

I certainly wouldn't recommend trying to amputate the tarantula's leg, if you get it wrong you are going to cause serious injury to your tarantula and / or end up getting bitten!

In our experience a tarantula with a broken foot is less likely to amputate the limb than with an injury further up the leg. And it will still use the rest of the leg to walk around on and balance on. It certainly hasn't hindered any of our past specimens.

It may not look very pretty but I can pretty much bet you are more bothered about the broken foot than the tarnatula is lol!

superglue it if its still bleeding.

Yeah I'm def not amputating my spiders leg He seems to be alright it's still visibly broken though.Your prob right ladyriot my guilt is bugging me more then anything.

_scorpio_ wrote:

superglue it if its still bleeding.

I hope for your T's sake your kidding.

If a tarantula has a severe breech in it's exoskeleton super glue is a commonly used adhesive to prevent further 'blood' loss. Some people put tissue paper on a wound to 'plug' the hole and prevent blood loss.. rather like when you cut yourself shaving

If memory serves me super glue was also originally designed to aid in medical procedures in humans. i.e. joining skin together. Or something similar to that anyway.

And after discussing this further with my hubby, he confirmed that tarantula's have this 'cut off' valve in each segment of the legs so no matter where the break is, they can quickly cut off circulation to that limb and therefore prevent further blood loss.

Damages to legs although look unpleasant, is pretty much water off a ducks back to a tarantula. the main cause for concern is an abdominal breech where they can bleed profusely

So he will be alright then? It won't stress him out? He hasn't snipped his leg off yet do you think he will keep it?

he should be fine man.

foot injury... naah probably not.

you would expect a tarantula to nip off a leg with a mid leg breech or higher. We have actually witnessed a tarantula nip off a leg, it was totally mad, over in seconds and the tarantula carried on as if nothing ever happened.

Edit; our matt was kinda peeved off though, we had only just got this breeding pair of T's and as soon as we put the male in his space he climbed up the side, lost grip and landed on the water bowl... not impressed!!!
Anyway later on that night the leg was nipped off and less than a couple of drops of blood left the leg.

its not his foot its the next section above that right below the mid section.

diabollicallycursed wrote:

its not his foot its the next section above that right below the mid section.

I would have thought if it was going to get rid of the leg, it would have done it by now hun.

ok thank you you have been very helpful and I apreciate it.

forgot to ask... what sp. is the tarantula? or have I missed that bit somewhere lmao!

and not a problem thats what we're all here for

He's a full grown grammastola rosea named fluffy Thats why I was worried cause he would not have grown his leg back.

he's so kind and gentle too he didn't deserve that.

no sadly not I'm afraid, however if you do introduce him to a girlfriend it will not hinder him.

Like I said we personally have seen our haplopelma sp. 'vietnam' successfully mate with a leg missing and a break in the same leg area yours has suffered... in fact pictures are here somewhere in the tarantula section .. or a link to the thread on the BTS website

doesn't the female kill the male?

female rosea's can be quite aggressive and they have been known to attack males before proceedings take place! but there have been lots of successful breeding's.. be prepared is the motto with any tarantula mating session!

even the fittest male can falter to a female rosea :S

He's an old man though I don't think he'll be with us much longer I'm hoping one more year because I love him to death. I'm trying very hard to find a Brazilopelma colloratvillosum but it's hard.

ooooh we recently sold ours to lycanlord. beautiful T's

They are soooo hard to find here a close friend of mine works at a popular pet store they have almost 100 breeders and she has been making phone calls everyday for me for the last week so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. However they did find me a tailess whip scorpion wich I hope to get in a month or so.