Another food thread

[Katrina]

I know this type of thread is covered a lot, but it is usually informative and helpful for new members...

So - what are you feeding? Why do you feed what you do? Pictures?

I LOVE this time of year - I am super lucky as my mom works part time at a greenhouse and so I get lots of fresh greens and veggies from her. She loves picking out and saving healthy skink foods for me, so I really don't have to buy any of that stuff. I fed today and it consisted of raw, grated up zucchini and pumpkin, and a bunch of different greens including arugula, water cress, something called pepper greens, swiss chard, and a bit of bok choy. That kind of variety is definitely NOT necessary for a healthy skink diet, I only feed all of that because I have it and if they don't eat it I have to! My mom sends crazy amounts of greens to us, it is her way of showing her love. I also threw a tomato in there because I have so many - tomatoes aren't super healthy, but fine in moderation.

I used a can of Wellness chicken stew dog food for protein. Added vitamins and calcium plus D3. That is a pretty normal meal for me - dog food plus whatever greens / veggies I have on hand (more of the healthy ones, less of the "in moderation" ones), often a calcium or calcium plus D3 supplement and sometimes a mutivitamin supplement as well. With my mom's generosity I fed 7 skinks plus leftovers for the roaches for about $3.

The mix before I plated it:


So - what are you feeding and why? Post pictures!

[Bird_Brain]

These are always great discussions! While I dont have any pictures, I typically feed canned Pedigree dog food (loaf style) mixed with thawed frozen veggies. The veggies vary by what decide to purchase at that time and I have also used frozen greens as well.

A very simple answer as to why I use this diet is I have seen the success of this diet with owner/breeders of BTS who have used this diet for several decades.

I will also supplement the diet with Mazuri Insectivore pelleted diet.

I have tried many different diets in the past and prefer their current diet due to easy, cost, and the skinks preference to it over most others.

[Fatal_S]

I'm feeding 2 different diets right now.

My adults are on their normal diet: canned dogfood with mixed greens/veggies/squash.
This particular meal was beef pedigree with collard and dandelion greens and calcium+D3 on top:

Since then they also had cooked egg & chicken with mixed frozen veggies (carrots, peas, corn & green beans). These are very typical meals here.

But I found the babies from my second litter weren't eating much. I realized this was because the first litter was getting mostly chicken-dogfood and these ones were getting more beef. Obviously the chicken tastes better because switching back to chicken-flavors provided instant results. They're huge pigs. So same diet idea as the adults but with chicken type foods (and egg) and smaller pieces of greens/veggies.

[Susann]

Unfortunately I don't have pics of the beginning-stage, wish I did, but I will just write down what went into this batch.

What I usually do is go to a couple stores and get every single vegetable and green I can find that are good to feed BTS.

For example this batch has:
Yellow Squash
Acorn Squash
Zucchini
Parsnip
Collard Greens
Mustard Greens
Kale
Red Chard
Green Chard
Baby Bok Choy
A small ammount of*:
*Peas
*Corn
*Carrots
*Bell Pepper
*Brusselsprouts
*Green Beans
*Lima Beans
I chop everything up, add:
Boiled ground Turkey
Boiled ground Beef
Sometimes Boiled ground Chicken
A can of Wellness 95% Meat (usually Beef)

The reason I add the canned meat is that it binds everything together so that when I freeze it, the veggies and greens don't come out all mushy and slimey, it really holds up very well.

So now that I've chopped, grated, boiled, sprinkled, and blended everything, I have a LARGE batch. I tightly press the mixture into ice cube trays and freeze.

When it is deep-frozen, usually two, three days later, I pop the food out and quickly wrap each cube individually, and quickly put them in a bag and back in the freezer.

On feeding-day I take out and thaw only what I need. I have found that for my 3 BTS four cubes ends up with everyone full but not too much left over.

As you can tell, there's water on the bottom after thawing. If I have about 40% meat in the mixture, I pour out the water before mixing it up. If I don't have about 40% meat in it, I leave the water and add some Mazuri Insectivore pellets to it to add the protein, but also to soak up some of the liquid so it's not as mushy.


And as they say in Sweden: Smaklig måltid!

[StaceyLeigh]

Finally got a picture this morning of Ember's food (Thor got the same). It is Simply Nourish Chicken and Duck Cat food, with summer squash, winter squash, bok choy, a sprinkle of repcal vit., and egg shell for calcium. I just discovered the Simply Nourish brand and it looks like it has very good ingredients, has anyone used this? I usually feed wellness, or blue buffalo. I alternate between cat and dog food.


You can see from the picture that the cat food has real shredded chicken, which I like to see.