Can I feed my BTS beets?

[Emz3]

Hi all,

I have some left over canned beets and thought I'd throw it in their dish today. The care sheet mentioned beet greens but not beets. Any thoughts?

[Scotts1au]

There shouldn't be any issues with this, if they eat it. :-)

[Lea]

Actually, I would have to disagree and say no to feeding beets. Beetroot is extremely high in oxalates, similar to spinach, so best avoided in reptiles. Canned beetroot is often pickled or preserved in vinegary or other acid, so would be best not fed from a can regardless. The beet greens can be eaten, but still, because of the oxalate content, be wary of feeding too many high oxalate foods in your diet.

[Scotts1au]

Is it going to kill them, no
Is it a good food, no
Will they eat it if it has been preserved in vinegar, probably not, would it hurt the bluey if it did, no. But not good practice.

[Emz3]

Thanks guys! I didn't feed any of the canned beets. I just compared what I would do for my dog. Often, canned veggies have a lot of sodium so I just nixed the idea immediately after I posted.

I do have a new questions now. LeaBilby made it sound like spinach is bad due to the amount of oxalates, however spinach is in Spring Mix and I know many people feed that to their bts. Your thoughts?

[Lea]

Thanks guys! I didn't feed any of the canned beets. I just compared what I would do for my dog. Often, canned veggies have a lot of sodium so I just nixed the idea immediately after I posted.

I do have a new questions now. LeaBilby made it sound like spinach is bad due to the amount of oxalates, however spinach is in Spring Mix and I know many people feed that to their bts. Your thoughts?

Spinach actually has about twice the amount of oxalates as beets. It's best avoided as a food for your skink as it seriously interferes with your skink's ability to absorb calcium from the gut. Oxalates readily bind with calcium, so even with vitamin D3 supplementation, the calcium has an affinity with oxalate, so will bind with it. Calcium as an oxalate is one of the main causes for kidney stones, but can also form deposits in the tissues, restricting movement and causing pain.

As the calcium from the diet is bound with oxalate, it then depletes the body of free calcium, making serum (blood level) calcium low. This low calcium is detected by the parathyroid glands, which stimulate the release of the parathyroid hormone. It in turn, tells the body to find calcium from other sources, mainly the bone, to regulate and normalise the blood calcium level. Depleting the bone of calcium makes the bones brittle and porous and is one of the main causes of metabolic bone disease.

We should always exercise caution when feeding high oxalate foods for this reason. While seemingly innocuous and not really toxic in their own right, it's the chain of events following ingestion of high oxalate foods that results in the damage.

Even if we supplement with vitamin D3 to help maintain good calcium levels for health, we may be unknowingly destroying all that effort by interfering with calcium absorption by not understanding the foods we are feeding.

It's worth being vigilant when feeding and supplementing and being on the lookout for foods that may interfere with calcium absorption.

So, in answer to your question, no, spinach is not actually bad in it's own right, meaning it isn't toxic or poisonous, but it contains those dastardly oxalates in such high quantities, that they may interfere with calcium absorption from an otherwise excellent and varied diet.