an all feeder diet.

[xxmonitorlizardxx]

I will soon breed(depending on how this thread goes): dubia/discoid cockroaches, european night crawlers, and some kind of snail. I know that it is very easy to just feed dog food from petco or whatever. But I would like to try some feeders instead of such an artificial diet. Could feeding only these feeders work?

Edit:
It seems that african land snails are illegal in the states...

[Katrina]

Yeah, feeders properly gut loaded would be an excellent diet. Most stick with dog food because it is so convenient and easy. But feeders like that would be great and at least one study indicates it would be similar to their natural diet (at least for the species in the study, which was Centralians).

[Jeff]

Unless you are going to go to Indonesia and follow a merake around for a year, you will not know exactly what a "natural" diet looks like. Feeder insect/snails are great, but if you feed nothing else it is very likely that your diet will be missing things. I can not say positively that this diet won't work, but I would reccommend against it. Can you do what you are planning and still offer other things (mainly dog food) at least occassionally? I think that would be much less risky for your skink.

[Bird_Brain]

Why fix something thats not broke?

[xxmonitorlizardxx]

Why fix something thats not broke?

Cuz its fun...

I don't know I was looking at different feeders and thought it would be a "cool" diet. And they'll make great fishing bait

[Katrina]

I don't think 'cool' is the right reason for this. I do think that if you gut load carefully, feed the feeders well and supplement calcium as well it could be a good diet. Just difficult and a lot of work. But one breeder has been using mainly roaches for over a year with good success.

But why fix what isn't broken is a great point... And most people won't put the work in maintain this.

[Jeff]

Fun is a good thing, but not if it jeopardizes the well-being of the animals in your care. Please don't try random things because you think it might be "fun".

[Nae]

Although this is speaking for shingles and westerns, I dont see how a merauke would be much different. But, in the wild they eat a mixture of insects (mainly ground crawlers like beatles, although I could see worms above surface in indonesia), carrion, plantation, snake and bird eggs and even young birds that fall from nests - A large variety of things SO I personally dont think restricting the carnivorous side of their food to insects would be natural. (Yes, dog goof isnt natural, but thats beside the point Its meat at least)

[El Lobo]

There are a few papers around on the wild bluetongue diet but they are restricted to a couple of sub-species. I don't think anyone can conclusively state they know what is a wild diet. Indonesian species would have access to a totally different range of foods than say a shingleback because of locality. I have been able to observe wild blotchies for a reasonably long time, yet, apart from a few obvious foods, I don't really have much knowledge of their diet.

Something I have noticed with my blotchies now they are 3.5 years old is that they now eat a lot more vegetable matter than they did even a year ago. It is quite deliberate too as they will sometimes leave small amounts of the meat but eat almost all of the vegetable including greens.

I would be hesitant to try an exclusive insect feeder and gastropod diet, even if they are gut loaded I don't think the diet would be varied enough to provide a proper balance of vitamins and minerals.

There is no place for "cool" when you are messing with a pet's life.

[Lea]

There are a few good and naturally occurring grubs and bugs in Australia that would be and most certainly are, part of a wild skinks diet. The trou le with the Indonesian skinks, is that there really is so little none about the insect life native to their habitats, that specuLting whether this diet would be good for them, is a bit of a risk and you are chancing upsetting A good diet already.

Shinglebacks eat some insects, but observing them in the wild in the south of the nt and in Sa, they eat a lot more vegetation than we realise.