my beardie died out of the blue - help

[Carm180]

we have 6 beardies that are between 4 and 5 months old. they vary in size, but the largest, and seemingly healthiest one died last night very unexpectedly. my son called me in because he thought the dragon wasn't breathing. then he seemed to be gagging, or at least his mouth opened very wide, his beard puffed out and was black. he did that and would go from running around like crazy, and then he got completely rigid and still. he did the gagging thing several more times, and would alternate between being rigid and then loosen up. within 30 minutes of noticing his strange behavior, he was gone.

my son and i are very upset about this, and don't want anything to happen to our other beardies.

does anyone have any thoughts on what may have happened?

[Falcon2891]

My female will do that when she is threated or stressed. Like if she sees my dog or something. But she has never died. What are you feeding them, she could have become impackted. Or stressed out for some reson. A defensive posture for beardeds is wide open jaw, puffed out black beard and flatend out stomach. Also what is the substrate in your cage? Sand, paper towels, alfalfa pelots, or moss. Some times when they eat the can ingest sand that can cause impaction.

[venus]

I am so sorry for your loss.
Did you have any food in with her or had she just eaten. I have read this happening before, a mealworm or other food got lodged in a beardies throat and it basically suffocated.

[Carm180]

we are still using paper towels as substrate because some of the beardies are pretty small yet. this happened around 10:30 pm. There shouldn't have been any food left in there. it had been hours since we had fed them last and are usually pretty careful not to put too many crickets or meal worms in at once. That's not to say that there couldn't have been a cricket hidden under a rock or something that they missed.

it didn't seem like the puffing up was a normal reaction type thing, but i don't know. but thanks for the thoughts. choking was about the only thing i could figure, but i just can't believe that at her size she that would happen! Chomper was about 12.5" and right at 3 oz.

[ChicagoCubs22]

id have to say it was impacted, and it tried somehow to regurgitate or release food that lingered in the tract, that caused it to die