Lizard Licking Good: What's for Dinner?

Feeding reptiles can often be tricky. The hardest part is determining the amount that should be fed and the size of the food items given. Many times we find ourselves wondering if our pets are getting enough food to eat because they still seem hungry. We also examine our scaly friends growth and evaluate whether or not they are in fact growing at a “normal” rate.  I feel that feeding your reptile the right way is the key to a happy healthy animal.

It is quite easy to limit the reptiles diet with either one or two types of food items. A good example of this is giving a small monitor lizard just crickets as it grows. While this is sufficient for the animal’s biological needs most of the time, it isn’t good for his enrichment needs. If you had to eat the same thing over and over again, would you feel satisfied? I do realize with certain reptiles there is little choice in the department of food variability.  

            If you have a strictly carnivorous reptile such as a python or boa then the only food items that you might be able to feed it are mice, rats, and rabbits. However, if you wanted to you could get a little creative and offer them some quail or chickens. This would give them a little bit of diversity. I also think there are certain biological difference between bird prey items and mammal prey items. Both of these are needed to provide a “healthy” more natural diet to the carnivore. The mammals may meet certain dietary needs and the bird prey items may meet the other.  Another good “variety” food source would be fish. So long as fish is in the animals natural diet. 

            Some lizards and a few snakes are both insectivorous and carnivorous. The trick to this particular issue is balance. I think the best way to achieve this balance would be to alternate between insects and carnivorous prey items. Which honestly a good way to keep up with this would be to create a feeding schedule and offer different food items on different days or every couple of days. This would keep the animal happy and healthy. I feel the more natural we can get to our reptilian friends diets the better it is for them. Mimicking their diets as close as we can to what they would have in the wild will ensure that every dietary need is met and they are enriched. Foraging and hunting are natural ways to occupy an animal’s time and energy. By diversifying their diet you can help enrich them too.

Darwin, Nile Monitor, eats mice, insects, and fish

            There are reptiles that are devout vegetarians. These guys can only eat veggies and fruits’ as they are herbivores. These herbivores eat leafy greens and some fruits. It is also wise to broaden their diets as well. They would love to have their greens in different forms. A different type of salad every day is what they dream about at night. The only key ingredient to an herbivores diet would be the addition of calcium and phosphorus. What I ask from pet owners is to get creative when it comes to their animals diets. We should change their daily diets just as much as ours do and imitate what they would encounter in the wild for food as closely as we can.

            Another issue is how fast should my animal be growing and how to get growth in general. There is no set rate to which your reptile should be growing. Each animal is different because each one has different rates of metabolism. Their metabolic rates are due to genetic factors mainly.  This means that each animals growth will vary from individual to individual. If you look at other reptiles of the same species and you feel that he/she could pack on a few more pounds or add a few more inches in length compared to others their age then there is hope.

            One way that I’ve seen that causes a reptile to grow is by increasing food size and amount. The more significant growth comes from adding larger food items to your reptiles diet. For instance if your Savannah monitor needs to grow a little more hastily then start increasing its mouse size and eventually building it up to eating large rodents and chickens all the while supplementing its diet with other things like fish and crickets. I’ve seen this first hand.

My Nile Monitor seems to be growing much faster since I’ve been upping the size of his prey items. I would do this within reason. Gradually increasing his food size over time.  He is shedding more and seems to be more active. Now there is a limit to how far an animal should be pushed as far as feeding goes. I never feed my animals more than they need and never try to push them to eat more than they want or that is insufficient for them to be healthy. Overfeeding any animal is bad and can prove to be detrimental to their health. I’m against power-feeding all together. This should never be done. I think the animal should eat similar to the way it would in the wild. This insures that the reptile is happy and healthy.
Some things to always keep in mind when considering a reptiles diet are VESL:

• Variety
• Enrichment
• Size
• Limitations

          Check out this video from BHB Reptiles that discusses an experiment on feeding corn snakes!