Eating too much dog food

[Fernando]

Hello everyone.

My skink is about 10 weeks old now. It seems as though he is only hungry every 2 days. And every time I try and feed him veggies, he won't have it. When I bring out the dog food however, he's right on it, in no time.

How do I get him to eat more veggies/greens?

I think Jeff mentioned, in the closed thread, to mix frozen veggies inside the dog food. I had thought about doing that tonight.

Does anyone else have any other tricks up their sleeve? Tough love? Have you guys tried Mazuri Tortoise food?

[NennaMeerkat]

You could do tough love, but from what I understand they need a bit of protein in their diet. What I do is hand mix in fresh veggies cut up pretty small in with the dog food mash. That way the skink has a really hard time simply eating around the veggies for the dog food. Some skinks just want something that smells like dog food to tackle and eat it...sometimes my guy is like that.

[Spindown]

I always mix in the veggies with the dogfood. They usually eat it that way. An alternative I've heard mentioned is to get can o' snails and use the snail juice to "sauce" the veggies....skinks lOVE snails.

[Lea]

Make a meaty gravy by adding a little water to the dog food, then you can slop it over the veg, like the others have said. They think they are eating just the fast food, but you've been cunning and disguised them! Give them the meaty-slopped veg before the meaty part, if you are concerned he gets no veggies. Pureeing the veg and swirling it through the dog food makes it impossible for them not to eat it, also.

[Susann]

I would use both techniques, mix veggies into the dog food AND tough love.
Skinks are very smart; you have to think of them like children. If you offer them veggies and they don't eat them, and then you bring out the candy (in this case, the meat), next time you bring out the veggies, they are going to hang out hoping you bring out the candy again! They learn quickly.

Just chop the veggies up fine, and mix them into the dog food, something like this:

IMG_1177 - Copy.JPG

then with time, leave the veggies a bit bigger.

[NennaMeerkat]

Ha that is what Mr. Blue's meals often look like! I have been considering making a "loaf" of sorts with cooked lean beef/chicken with veggies finely done mixed in. Then just feed said cooked "loaf". I think it would be fun to do too.

[Lea]

Susann, what is the creamy looking substance coating the mix?

[Susann]

Susann, what is the creamy looking substance coating the mix?

That would be dog food.

[Fernando]

Thanks for the help guys. I will try this next time.

[NennaMeerkat]

Good luck and keep us posted

[Lea]

Susann, what is the creamy looking substance coating the mix?

That would be dog food.

Thank you. It looked too anaemic to be meaty

[Susann]

When you said "creamy" I realized that particular dog food WAS very ligth colored. You can probably tell there's cooked ground meat mixed in with the veggies and greens too. The dog food really just coats it all to add protein and "yummy" scent.