Are lizards smart enough to find their food??

[02SXViper]

i was just wondering if my green iguana will find his own way to the little area in his cage where there is a ...feeding dish of leaves and commercial pellets.

i got him on tuesday night, on wed. i put food in there but he did not touch it so i took him out of his cage later that day and waved a few leaves , a strawberry and a pellet in his face and he ate them all, but when back in his cage, did not seem to touch the food overnight. so today i took him and the dish out put fresh leaves and pellets in and he tried to eat a few pellets but he could not seem to hold them in his mouth...like a bit from a bad angle, and he ate a bunch of leaves from the bowl and hand fed....


so anyways, if i have to i'll do that every day but my real question is, is my iguana smart enough to get hungry and search his enviornment for some fresh leaves?


oh also- i have fake plastic leaves for climbing and decoration....will he try to eat these and then think, 'there is no food here'?

[LoraJean]

well there are a few options here.

one: he may be stressed out and will not eat as much then, so keep feeding him from your hand and eventually he will calm down.
two: depending on how old he is, he may be used to being fed a different way, and its confused
three: the way you described his eating lopsided sounds strange, check for a growth in his mouth, I beleive it comes from a nutritional deficiency, its fleshy colored and is usually right inside the jaw, mine had that once, the vet gave him pennicilin and it went away in a couple days, anyway it really effected his eating ability.

anyway if he is hungry, he will find it, they are smart reptiles, but can be pretty moody, anytime I went away mine wouldn't eat at all, I had to come back from vacation once, cause he refused to eat for 5 days, also I would highly advice using fresh veggies/fruits to feed him with a vitamin/calcium dusting, mine hated pellets and depending on where you get them, arent as nutritional as raw food, a very healthy and inexpensive food is dandelion leaves/stems flowers, they are all over the place and my greenie loved them, be careful that the lawn is not sprayed with pesticides though!! mix it up and use variation, bananas, romaine, apples, for some reason I'm thinking there may be a problem with broccoli, I heard something once and never gave it again, but its probably wrong, obviously avoid ice burg like the plague. anyway, hope this helped. also he may have been fed crickets, so maybe thats why he's weirded out.

[Alika]

How old is the iguana?

Most baby igs will not eat while you are staring at them. They just don't like to be watched. Unless he's in an overwhelmingly large cage or the food isn't in plain sight, chances are he knows where it is and will eat to his heart's content once he has some privacy. Also, he's probably still a little stressed from being in a new home and a new environment, and may not eat for a few days just because of that. Don't worry unless this continues for longer than a week.

I do, however, have some concerns about your diet.

What do you mean by 'leaves'? Can you be more specific? Are they leaves like from a tree (what kind?), a bush, or leafy green vegetables?

Also, commercialized diets (pellets) aren't considered to be very good for igs. Some brands are better than others, but, overall, they all contain questionable ingredients. The best thing to feed igs is lots of dark, leafy greens and vegetables with small amounts of fruit.

If you MUST feed pellets, stick with the higher quality brands like Mazuri and RepCal. Also, NEVER feed pellets dry, because they will quickly and severely dehydrate your ig. Make sure you soak them in water to make them soft before feeding them, but be aware that this will make them spoil more quickly. You shouldn't leave softened pellets in a cage for more than four hours.

For more in depth information about diets, check out www.greenigsociety.org and www.anapsid.org.

[02SXViper]

hey, i have no idea on his age, he is about 11" long (nose to tail), and has just come off a shed when i bought him a few days ago. his mouth looks really healthy. by the way and i am feeding romaine, strawberry, thinly sliced carrots, and the pellets, in which i spray with the mist bottle to soften...i read that iguanas dont technically chew their food, so i spray to soften them up.

this is progress i think ---> i dusted a single romaine piece of leaf and just set it on a branch, i came back like an hour later and it was gone,....im sure he ate it, but im sure it did not take an hour....i believe i have his cage nicely set up, at the pet store all they fed was watered pellets. and they said he ate more than the other 5 'lizards'...and if you've seen the pics, he is sorta fat...hehehehe, in the healthy way i think... like he shuld be (fit not fat) and anyways....any other questions or things i should check?

[Alika]

Definitely check out the diet list I posted earlier. He'll fill out better and faster on a diet of highly nutritious plants like collard greens, mustard greens, turnip greens, and dandelion greens. The more dark, leafy greens you give him, the healthier he will be

Pet stores don't know jack. Seriously consider getting rid of the pellets. They are convenient for you, but not the healthiest thing for your lizard.

Strawberries are a great treat! If you offer them everyday, those little seeds can sometimes slow their digestive tract and back it up a bit. I'd only give those kinds of fruits every 2-3 days. Try banana, too. My iguana absolutely loves banana... and figs!

Fat is good! You can NOT overfeed an iguana if you're feeding it all the right things. Iguanas store fat in the base of their tails, so if his tail base is fat then he probably has a good weight.

11" is just a baby He'll grow quickly.

At groups.yahoo.com there is a group called Baby Iguana that specializes in helping new iguana owners with babies. I'd highly recommend checking it out. All the folks there are going through the same growing pains as you, and the mods and senior members will help you get on the right track to having a long and healthy life with your new friend.

[NicoleRussell]

Pellets are a great supplement for any diet---but never as a staple.
I prefer monster diet pellets---but zoomed is what the headstart facility uses in GC for the iguanas. They use them soaked in water like you would use croutons in salad though.
A balanced diet is essential for your growing ig--and the pellets are just an insurance policy

	Iguana Iguana

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[02SXViper]

sweet! i noticed that earlier that the base of his tail is a "healthy" thick base on it. i am going to goto the store like in 20 minutes to pick up mustard, and collard. also green beans and maybe like papaya mango and a banana...i'm sure he is a good eater naturally but if you had 5 brother/sister and then overnight mysteriously appeared in a different house, you'd prolly be stressed.

i read almost that entire sire aboput food and care and stuff...the greenig something site. i learned my pellets and romaine/carrot combo definitly will not work at all. well, im headed to the store. you have an email so i can send you a pic of him/her? i sent some to the other 2 people yesterday but have got no response...im sure its an iguana though, becasue he has a beard thing, and a wierd scale on the side of his head....and his neck/face is sort of blue.

	Iguana Iguana

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[NicoleRussell]

(I moved this to the iguana forum BTW)

	Iguana Iguana

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[Alika]

Originally Posted by NicoleRussell

Pellets are a great supplement for any diet---but never as a staple.
I prefer monster diet pellets---but zoomed is what the headstart facility uses in GC for the iguanas. They use them soaked in water like you would use croutons in salad though.
A balanced diet is essential for your growing ig--and the pellets are just an insurance policy

*shrugs*

Everyone has a different opinion when it comes to diets, and there are plenty of healthy iguanas kept on pellets I just don't like the ingredients listed in most commericialized iguana foods... some even list sources of animal protein. I'd much rather give a varied fresh diet and lightly supplement with powdered vitamins and Calcium, so that's what I suggest.

I'm so glad you're learning about nutrition. Just make sure you read the ingredients of any commercialized food or vitamin before feeding it, and use your own best judgement based on the things you are now learning. It is possible to overdose on vitamins, so if, for example, you use a pelleted diet high in vitamin A (a vitamin that is easy to overdose on) you might not want to feed fresh foods high in vitamin A.

As for the picture, I don't think I can help you much there. If you can't resize it down enough to post it, I doubt my email program will let it through. Did you try photobucket.com as I suggested in your other thread?

[NicoleRussell]

Iguanas kept on pellets wouldn't be too healthy at all
In the headstart facility for the blue iguana it's just used in conjunction with the salads--and they noticed better overall health after introducing them.
I will mix some pellets with baby food as a treat--but I do really like Trexes iguana dust as a supplement--been using it forever

	Iguana Iguana

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[Alika]

Of course... I meant as a supplement Sometimes, communicating in written language is the most obscure method of all. Amazing how much we rely on inflection and body language during spoken conversation.

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[NicoleRussell]

You have no idea how many times I have been misunderstood just based on lack of visuals during conversation.....it's challenging to write and have others "get it" ..it's an art. When you come across people who don't use even basic grammar it can be unnerving---then your whole view of them becomes warped---nomatter who they really are.

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