Low Fat Treat Ideas

[tignish99]

Our skink always behaves as if we are starving her. Obviously that is not the case as she probably eats better than we do with meat, veggies, greens, variety of worms that I raise myself, etc, as per the skink food guide. Every time we go into her enclosure to refresh her water, pet her, or take out poop, and do not offer her food, the look on her face and behaviour says "Hey! There is no food! Why is there no food? Aren't you going to leave some food?!" The kids love feeding her and she is quite fun to feed. Can you suggest some low fat treats we can give her when we interact with her. I do not want her to balloon into a big rolly-polly lizard.

Thank you

[Linnea]

its not really only the fat content that needs to be considered, but how the increase in "treats" will affect the vitamin and mineral balance. The skink stomach can, surprisingly, only take a limited amount of food at once, and adding something less nutrient rich and low fat more often can thus be a problem if she eats more of that than the real food and feels full, thus not getting any fat and vitamins needed instead.

It is really only my personal opinion, but its better to keep treats to regular levels and regular feedings. Part of being a responsible owner is to say no and keep the animal in good health you could of course feed smaller meals more often, making every other day a feeding day for example. Then it would still be just like usual, only more feedings a week.

more food is more food, always no matter in what shape it comes.

There are some great feeding recipe threads here with very colourful recipes, im sure some of the more advanced ones can be very fun to attempt! (these, fed in smaller pieces, can be fun to give)

[critterguy]

Treats are totally fine. consider the animals diet as a whole including treats.

Treats could include
-soldier fly larvae(calci/phoenix worms if you do not have access to a compost pile..these have a good Ca:P ratio already)
-mealworms/superworms/dubia roaches. You can dust them with Calcium before offering but the first two do not hold calcium powder very well.
-small snails
-cat treats...particularly semimoist types. These are more palatable if soaked in water a bit before offering
-if yours will take them you can try veggies as well! colorful sweet peppers are a favorite with mine.

Your kids could try target/clicker training her using the treats, or putting her in a enclosed area with the treats hidden and having her forage for them. In my experience skinks take quite well to this.

[Tom]

I must admit, I can't resist throwing in an extra dubia or hisser now and then...

I also prefer to feed smaller meals more often, but I do not have enough BTS experience to say if that is better or worse for them. It has served me well for decades with other lizards, but I've only been keeping blue tongues a relatively short time, and only one of them for most of that time.

[Katrina]

I wouldn't worry about low fat treats - as long as the skink isn't overweight, you can give it tidbits of anything healthy.

Live feeders are great choices, berries, bits of meat, snails (you can find canned ones without salt or anything added), small pieces of fruit... you can feed most anything. I usually feed 'treats' whenever I have berries or fruit or something they would like on hand.

[Scotts1au]

A lot of their natural food - grubs etc are high in saturated fats. I think that generally blueys are lot more tolerant of fat in the diet than other forms of reptiles. In fact diets with a moderate amount of fat such as those found in Dog Foods are beneficial and may be even in the cold light of day be found to be important for breeding and long term health.

To mine, the best treats are snails yum