Feeding guidelines?

[mjk19]

I'm finding the feeding part of keeping a bts very confusing. I have dog food that ill use but I'm confused on the vegetables. And how you guys mix it all together. I'm on a budget so I can't always afford to buy fresh vegetables every few days. I'm looking for a solution where I can make food once a week and freez it and thats cost effective. Something like that. I have a very busy schedule. So the easier the better. Please let me know what you guys do. Or how you mix things up.

Thanks a lot.

[tylociraptor]

There is a link and also a reccomended 'best' veggies section in the care sheet on this site. I go with that.

I chop my veggies, put them in a bowl, and mash the dog food into it, simply with a fork. Then I scoop it into a tupperware and keep in the fridge. Live insects are fed weekly (weekends), and pinky mice/eggs are used as a rare treat, the mice rarer than the eggs. (frozen mice, not live) Fruits are another good rare treat. I also make up a batch every week. It lasts me a week to a week and a half before its gone or needs to be thrown out.

In addition, i do have to say this... When did you get your skink? It looks like it was recently? Are you just now on a budget? You should always have money set aside to provide for emergency vet care and normal needs. If you can not afford fresh veggies once a week (which costs me under $10, weekly), how are you able to afford her dog food, heating, lighting? Can you afford vet bills? You should never go into getting an animal if you are on a budget that cannot afford you the ability to give them all their needs, daily, weekly, monthly, and in regards to emergencies. I suggest if you have not already, putting money away weekly in a savings account or something so that you'll have a good buffer to allow for giving your skink the proper care it needs.

[mjk19]

Yes I did recently purchase the skink. The point I was trying to make was that I don't want a $50 a month food bill. I don't mind buying fresh or frozen veggies. I'm looking for a very affordable way to feed my skink without the veggies going bad. I'd hate to buy lettuce for example and have it go bad. I want to make sure I use everything that I buy.

[mjk19]

I just found the food chart! Thanks. The food chart is a really big help. I always buy frozen green beans. This will probably be the only frozen food. I think I got it now thanks to that chart. Still leave any feeding methods you'd like. Thanks.

[Fatal_S]

You can definitely use frozen meals regularly. Dog food + frozen veggies + calcium + D3 is pretty much the staple diet many great breeders use. I know some make huge batches of food and freeze it in ice cube trays. Then on feeding day a cube is thawed and that's dinner. Frozen veggies are packed very fresh, so sometimes they've got more nutrients than 'fresh' veggies from the store. There are a couple nutrients that might be damaged in freezing, so feed fresh sometimes, and consider adding a reptile multi-vitamin occasionally.

[tylociraptor]

Fatal, do the mixes you get include greens? I beleive they are more sucseptible to nutrient damage when frozen? Also, what mixes of frozen veggies do you use? Personally, I have never seen any frozen veggie mixes that are finely chopped enough that misha would be able to eat them. Do you thaw them daily or would you be able to thaw a bunch and feed over the course of a week? If daily were the case, would you mix the dog food and veggies together or just let them sit on the plate seperately?

[Fatal_S]

I've never found commercial frozen green mixes here in Canukida, but I know they exist in the US. If I make a large batch of fresh food (greens/veggies/meat) I will freeze it all together. Most of my greens are fresh, because I have enough skinks I don't usually have leftovers to freeze.

Misha is small, as are all the babies. It makes it really annoying to prepare meals for me. For the bigger skinks I can usually just thaw a bag of frozen veggies, add meat/greens, and serve. For the babies I have to cut everything up into little tiny pieces, or run it through the food processor until it's close to being paste.

I don't freeze much anymore, but I would thaw the cubes on feeding day when I was using them. One ice-cube is a good size meal for most adult skinks. So I'd thaw enough for feeding day once or twice a week. If I was making baby food I might thaw enough for a couple days at a time.

I almost always mix my foods together. Once in a while though I offer the food separately and let them decide what to eat. Or sometimes I only offer one thing (a salad perhaps, or just a plate of fruits) instead of a mix. Most of my skinks are happy to eat anything I offer.

[tylociraptor]

Hm! Read this post too op maybe it will help you.

Well, right now I am using wellness dog food as a protein source, a mix of green beans, squash, and either green pepper, or broccoli (rarely), carrots, etc for veggies. I add in one or two of either dandelion greens, mustard greens, or kale.

I want to change this so that instead, I will do one week of dog food, one week of cooked lean ground beef. Once she's bigger, I'll switch to frozen veggies every once in awhile, but still do fresh.

What I would like to do is... make a batch of the veggies and dog food/meat, freeze a portion and leave a portion unfrozen. Additionally I would just leave the greens OUT and put a leaf in with the food as I serve, torn up a little (as I find it goes bad faster than the rest of the food, which could be problematic in future).

Weekends I will feed hornworms and/or if they are available, but not solely... should I only feed those on the day I feed them, or should I offer additional food as normal?

Do you think this would be a good method, switching it up weekly so she gets both a variety and a good balance of different foods and sources of protein? Misha likes her veggies very much and will go out of the way to pull greens out of her food to eat them first, she will actually look for, find, bite and pull out the leaf and eat it. It's adorable.