BLUE TONGUE SKINKS

So while asking questions around the facebook group blue tongue skink enthusiasts, I recieved mixed opinions on when to feed dog food vs cat food. For example: Cat food for the first 6 months, and dog food for the rest of the time. My baby skink just ate his first bite of food and it was dog food. Can I stick with the dog food?

Short answer, yes you can. As I'm sure was explained to you, most breeders and keepers prefer canned cat food for the first 8-12 months and then a switch to canned dog food. The reason behind this is, in most cases, canned cat food tends to have a higher ratio of protein to plant matter, which better simulates the primarily carniverous diets of baby and juvenile BTS. As adults, the diet rounds out a bit and vegetation is more readily consumed. So it is preferable, but not absolutely necessary that you follow this plan. With that said, some keepers prefer not to feed cat or dog food and have successfully raised BTS off of gutloaded vitamin dusted insects and others have raised BTS off of solely dog food diets from birth so obviously cat food isn't the only way to rear a healthy skink.

Great explanation. Do you think that the same logic would apply to pink tongue skinks?

To be honest I'm not sure as I've never kept Pink Tongue Skinks, although they are a species I REALLY want to work with in the future. I have seen that many people seem to advocate for cat food as the staple for these skinks, while very few will do the same with cat food for adult BTS.

Mine would only eat snail when they were little. I finally got them to eat cat food- now I have a hard time getting them to eat snails.

My skinks ( eastern BTs , eastern water skink & now a delicate rainbow skink (rescue this week when it's nest was disturbed while I'm getting major yard landscaping works done) to use about 20 cu m of fill that is the result a driveway revamp and extension and a garage extension from 6m x 6m to 6m x 9m ) all like their live insects and salad (with sliced hardboiled egg added occasionally)..

So it's crickets, woodies (roaches) , silkworms ( I am self sufficient with these ) , snails ( I buy live by the punnet occasionally ) , large BSF lavae as my scale babies' staples , and occasional mealworms (all stages) + supers (all stages) as occasional treats.

My 2 adult BTs get two large silkworms per day as their main protein staple - only because I always have these for my bearded dragons and eastern bluetongue skinks.
The water skink wont touch a silkworm grub ( I've offered her small ones about 1 inch) but she goes banana's for silkworm moths.
The little rainbow skink loves tiny silkworms.

I have a tin of dog food stashed away as an emergency protein source as well as a bottle of GrubPie and a packet of Wombaroo Reptile Mix and big bottle of VetaFarm Lizard Pellets as emergency lizard foods should I ever need them if we have another earthquake or another Tasman Sea Tropical Cyclone and getting live foods becomes hard .

http://www.repashy.com.au/index.php?rou ... path=59_63 , can't get their BTS mix here in Australia.
https://vetafarm.com.au/product/lizard-food/
http://www.wombaroo.com.au/reptiles/reptile-supplement

I choose to not give cat or dog food to my pet lizards ( skinks , dragons and there was a gecko too who has escaped and is now back where we found him) as I prefer my pets to eat a diet more like what their wild cousins do and I think they enjoy the hunt as much as I enjoy watching them hunting / stalking and catching their diner.