BLUE TONGUE SKINKS

Hello again,

I apologize if I am bombarding the forum with my threads! I want to ask about some odd behaviour I saw Azure do today.
I changed out her enclosure and cleaned it thoroughly yesterday, and put in all new substrate and slightly altered the decor (but still the same stuff). I put her back in yesterday and she went into hiding. She had her head poking out and watching this morning when I went to give her her food as I normally do.
Usually, when I wake up in the morning she is sitting under her lamp, ready for food, and stares at my hands and licks her lips when I come in. This morning, however, she was still hiding. She wouldn't come out to eat, so I tried hand feeding her a bit, but she refused after a short time. I thought, "Okay, no big deal. She can miss one day," (I feed every day).
But in the middle of the afternoon she crawled up on the highest point of her hides and stared at the top of the vive. I came to check her out and chat at her, and she started rubbing her face vigorously against the glass. I took her out for a minute to see if something was stuck or bothering her but nothing I could see... and she still flickered her tongue as usual.
When I put her back she kept staring up at me, then at my hand, so I thought she was hungry. I brought her a make-shift meal (as her next feeding's food wasn't yet thawed for tomorrow) that she barely touched. So I don't know what any of that means. She did the glass rubbing thing again for a bit, before I started petting her and she eventually stopped and went to basking under her lamp.

What do you think that meant? I know it's probably nothing, and maybe they do silly things for no reason... was she hungry and wanted her normal meal? Did she want out of her vive? Was she MAD at me -- far-fetched, but I'd believe it after her display I'm just concerned because I don't want it turning into an issue, especially if it's something I've done and can prevent.

Sorry for the long post. Thank you!

Sounds to me like she had energy to burn and wanted some attention/exercise.

Awe, that makes me feel better! Thanks for the reply Mel

She definitely got the attention, that's for sure! Next time I'll take her out.

You might get better feeding responses if you backed off from Feeding every day. The food chart has a suggestion on how often to feed and how much to feed depending on age.

Sometimes if a skink is fed too often, they won't be as eager to eat or may eat very little.

My little BTS showed some odd behaviour after I changed the vivarium around. He was running around and started wagging his tail! Like a snake! I think he felt threatened as we moved his favourite hide. I'm so worried his tail will fall off. I don't want to be a bad skink-mother!

jdheff1982 wrote:You might get better feeding responses if you backed off from Feeding every day. The food chart has a suggestion on how often to feed and how much to feed depending on age.

Sometimes if a skink is fed too often, they won't be as eager to eat or may eat very little.

Oh, she eats like no other. She has an awesome feeding response. Every day she chows down like a monster, and gets so excited when I come in the room with food. It was just a one time thing, and I do think it was because of the change in environment. She ate today like she normally does... and pretty well finishes the bowl

By the way, I am fairly certain that Mel is correct about the extra energy/wanting out/wanting attention, because I was late feeding her today and she did something similar! She was sitting on top of a hide when I put her food dish in and went right in the dish before I could even pull my hand away!