Not Shedding Completely!?!

[NickBrahz]

Doesn't it go bad after opening though? I buy those tiny 150G cans and refrigerate them after opening, but make sure to throw it out within 5 days. I'm so afraid it'll go off and poison my little guy. :S

I feed a wide variety both cat food and dog food. I think the reason people prefer dog food is because it usually has veggies included, and blueys frequently won't eat veggies unless it smells like the meaty stuff. Cats are strict carnivores so cat food is mostly meat protein. So IMO if Quasimodo is good with veggies, feeding him cat food is just fine!

Yeah i refrigerate them for a week or so depends on how it looks and such but the price here is i can get a tiny can which is $1-2 or for $1.80 they sell big 1.2L cans and i have a few people i can give the dog food to for there dogs.

[wermy]

Yeah i refrigerate them for a week or so depends on how it looks and such but the price here is i can get a tiny can which is $1-2 or for $1.80 they sell big 1.2L cans and i have a few people i can give the dog food to for there dogs.

Ah I see I wish I had cats I could feed Titus's leftovers to and vice versa. Pains me to waste so much good food, especially when I've got a new can open and he decides to snub food for 3 days.

[MommyO1Jaya]

He has a rosette looking skin bag left in his left ear.He let me pull the right ear sak out but this one is really bothering him and I don't want to distress him or hurt him since he has the calcium lumps and bumbs. He's doing the doggie scratch. Is the cat food still okay if it gives him the runs? Or does that mean we should try the dog food? I do waste alot of cat food too since he only eats a quarter of a can of fancy feast at a time! And I'm allergic to cats to boot! Lol!

[NickBrahz]

Ah I see I wish I had cats I could feed Titus's leftovers to and vice versa. Pains me to waste so much good food, especially when I've got a new can open and he decides to snub food for 3 days.

Well looking around you can freeze it, i freezed some in some smaller containers a while back but i will unfreeze it and get back to you on how it looks and such.

[NickBrahz]

He has a rosette looking skin bag left in his left ear.He let me pull the right ear sak out but this one is really bothering him and I don't want to distress him or hurt him since he has the calcium lumps and bumbs. He's doing the doggie scratch. Is the cat food still okay if it gives him the runs? Or does that mean we should try the dog food? I do waste alot of cat food too since he only eats a quarter of a can of fancy feast at a time! And I'm allergic to cats to boot! Lol!

I would personally move to dog food seeing it gives him the runs and it might work out cheaper as well.

[MommyO1Jaya]

I finally got it out! He lied right there and let me pull it out with tweezers and never even moved. He seemed almost relieved to have it gone.

[wermy]

I'm glad you got it out!

The runs isn't normal, most blueys seem to tolerate cat food just fine. I myself have fed 3 varieties of Fancy Feast with no problems. I wonder if he's allergic to a particular meat? If you've been giving him say, a beef-based food, try others made of different proteins such as lamb, chicken, etc.

[MommyO1Jaya]

I never even thought about that! We gave him the beef in beef stock kind because we didn't know at the time he could eat chicken without a problem. I will try you guys suggestions til we find a fix. Thank you all! You have been most helpful!

[NickBrahz]

We are all here to help each other and its good to ask questions, let us know how it goes.

[MommyO1Jaya]

I will for sure! I did my research and I chose this site for the sheer love of BTS! Other places just list textbook stats and information or information on wild BTS! You all know you stuff from expierence, trial and error and years of loving your BTS! I love that and hope to help others in the same way! Y'all are great!

[Richard.C]

yep once opened it tend to go off pretty fast,u can reseal with these plastic caps but even then once the air gets in from originally being opened ,it tends to be funky after 5 to 7 days

[alichamp]

...with cat food just make sure you aren't getting ones with Taurine in them.

So I was just looking over the ingredients in the wet dog food tins I have (a couple of different brands) and apparently some dog food also has taurine.

I noticed it listed in Pedigree.

[NickBrahz]

...with cat food just make sure you aren't getting ones with Taurine in them.

So I was just looking over the ingredients in the wet dog food tins I have (a couple of different brands) and apparently some dog food also has taurine.

I noticed it listed in Pedigree.

I use Pedigree, i got a can next to me and i just double checked the ingredients and mine has no taurine, my kind is the 5 meat kind because i add my own veggies so i like the varied meat.
Edit: Oh the meats are Chicke, Pork, Beef, Lamb & Liver.

[alichamp]

I have a mini tin of Pedigree chicken. No matter, I will just get a different type next time.

Just shows to check what you get - I thought it was a dog vs cat food thing, I didn't realise it might differ between brands and now flavour varieties within dog food!! Interesting...

[wermy]

Taurine isn't definitively bad, we just don't know what effect it has on lizards because nobody's done any research into it. So to be safe most try to avoid it, but again, there's no hard evidence that you SHOULD avoid it. The breeder Joe Ball has used cat food for decades, and I'm sure there's significant levels of taurine in that.

Also just fyi to my fellow newbies, I've been reading up old threads on nutrition and read that chicken and turkey are bad primary protein sources, beef is recommended instead. Wish I'd known that before buying a bunch of chicken dog food tins, but I'm stocking up on beef now!

[alichamp]

I usually do get the red meats as primary, but thought that every now and then I could try throwing some chicken at her (so to speak of course!!)

[NickBrahz]

If your using dog food as the main meat staple then i suggest you get the 5 mixed meat cans, it has chicken, beef, pork lamb and liver so it has a nice meat variety then just mix in diced veggies.

[wermy]

I thought chicken would be okay in rotation too! Plus Titus really loves that chicken dog food, he ate more of that than any other protein. But after his MBD scare I went a little nuts looking through 38 pages of old forum threads, found one where someone was saying a chicken diet gave her skinks MBD, and was like aha, that's what I was doing wrong!

Nick, yeah I know you and Richard use the 5 meats Pedigree, for some reason Titus won't eat much of it, the fussy bugger. And the cans are huge. I bought one can, wasted 95% of it, and felt so stink. I am using mainly Fancy Feast now. Wee 85g cans, and even then I'm tossing half of it away at the end of the week. I need to find a good small-can brand that has beef in chunks, because my lil idiot gets the FF beef loaf/pate/mince/thing all up in his nosey.

[NickBrahz]

You can freeze dog food it's just like freezing normal human food, just make sure it's air tight so you don't get freezer burn, i split mine into small 50-100gram' ish containers when ones almost empty i take the next one out and put it in the fridge, it defrosts over night and it lasts about a week in the fridge before it starts to go bad.
To get over fussy eaters just keep feed him the 5 meats he will learn that he isn't getting any other type of dog food and will eventually start to eat it.

[Susann]

I would like to make a few points to clarify.

Like Wermy said, nobody knows what effect the added taurine in cat food has on reptiles, but to my knowledge, no negative effects have been attributed to taurine.

Taurine is naturally found in meat, especially muscle meats. Most mammals are also able to manufacture it from other amino acids in their diet. Cats can not, so taurine is now added to all commercial cat foods.
Some dog foods have it as well, and personally, I'm not too worried about my skinks occasionally eating foods with added taurine; as mentioned as well, some keepers have kept their skinks exclusively, or predominantly, on cat food without any ill effect reported to date. But there just aren't any studies done on effects of added taurine on reptiles.

The cases of MBD that developed from feeding chicken were mostly (if not all?) cases of people preparing their skinks meals "from scratch" rather than using canned dog/cat food. Chicken was used as the staple protein.
Using chicken dog/cat food as variety is perfectly fine; I personally don't use poultry as a staple, but feed it occasionally.