Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello everyone, as of yesterday my fiancee and I are proud new owners of a young ornate uromastyx! He (or she, not sure yet) is a beautiful little critter, and from all indications he's perfectly happy & healthy, but I'm a bit of a paranoid new owner at this point so I just thought I'd describe our experience thus far and see if anyone has any comments or advice.

Like I said, he seems to be adjusting pretty well, at least from my non-expert point of view. He's eating fairly often and he's gone to the bathroom twice so far. We've given him a good selection of veggies (carrots, corn, mustard greens, dandelion greens) and he munches on them regularly. We're also using millet as substrate, but I haven't noticed him eating any of it yet (which is probably a good thing). Any ideas on how much food he should be eating at this point? Seems to me like just the fact that he's eating anything so soon is a good sign.

As for the enclosure, we have him in a small tank which we bought as temporary shelter until we could get a larger tank which looks nice enough to put in our living room. After observing him for a day I can tell we definitely need to move him to a larger enclosure soon, as he spends quite a bit of time running around and scratching at the glass. He's quite an energetic little guy when he gets going!

This has actually lead us to take him out a few times to let him run around (closely monitored of course), but from what I've read on these forums I'm not so sure this was a good idea. He didn't "seem" stressed to me when we had him out, and he'll actually sit still in my hand from time to time, but this is our first time interacting with a uro so we don't really know what signs they show when they're stressed. He doesn't run from my hand, and he doesn't struggle when I try to pick him up, so that seemed okay to me, but I definitely don't want to do anything to harm him.

Anyway, sorry for the rambling message. I'd really appreciate any pointers from more experienced owners.

Thanks!

-Chris

some/most uros need to be left alone when you first get them. a few don't, hugo was crawling up my arm to escape and explore shortly after i got him. is your lizard a captive bred, that can make a difference too

the food sounds nice but you can always throw extra things in for variety, although you will find out that they have likes and dislikes

i forget how old you said he was, are you using supplements?
what is the temp of the basking spot and the cool end? do you have a UVB light for him?

these are just random questions to ask newbies, not trying to berate you or anything checkout deerfernfarms.com if you haven't already. great caresheet and history of the animal
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vonnie
***The first law of dietetics seems to be: if it tastes good, it's bad for you. — Issac Asimov ***

I'm not quite sure how old he is, but he's about 6-7 inches long. I guess he's pretty young. We are using supplements. We don't have a UVB light yet, but are planning to get one soon. I measured the surface temp at the basking spot to be right around 120, as it should be. Cool end is around 85 (air temp). I'm sure he's captive bred, so maybe he's already used to being handled. He really doesn't seem to mind. Thanks for the advice!

I'm no expert on Uros but the carrots you have in that dish look HUGE! Is he/she able to bust them up or does he swallow them whole?

I think that's probably just the fact that the food bowl is so close to the lens of the camera. The pieces are actually shredded carrots that I chopped up even further, so they're not really very big.

Hi, I just popped in to say glad your here, and hope you enjoy the forum.

Your new little friend is a CUTIE and hope we get to see many more pics of him

Just add lots of variety, GREENS, some collard greens, kale, turnip greens, Bok choy, peas, shredded raw squash, shredded carrots and radishes.. shredded apple, small banana chunk dandelion flowers as well as the leaves, they like hibiscus flowers, rose pedals, pansies, BUT make sure everything is pesticide free.

I always leave a shallow bowl of lentels and split peas (right out of bag) for them as snacks, they love them . You will hear them crack them / snapping sound as they eat them

Your Friendly Neighborhood Hostie,
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PHEve / Eve

Contact PHEve

The other day i picked up an eectrical veggie chopper...totally love it...my uro seems to be eating more of it and it makes sure he doesn't just pick out what he really likes...otherwise he would eat two things only...good luck and they are precious

Sounds like that'd be very helpful actually. I'll have to look into getting one.

Thanks Eve. So do you think he's big enough to eat dried peas & lentils at this point? I'd be afraid they're too big for him, maybe I could chop them up a bit though.

We finally settled on naming him Hermes, it took a while to pick one not knowing his gender, but we decided we could live with that even if he does turn out to be a she. Here's a few more pics of our little friend!