Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My 10 year old son has acquired a wild ground skink. We are new at this and would appreciated any help on feeding and care. Is there anything we can feed it besides crickets and worms?

Thanks
Wendy

I'd just feed it wild insects like small beetles, termites, grasshoppers and grubs for right now. Taking butterfly nets and sweeping a field for tiny insects can be one way of obtaining food for a ground skink. Another thing you can try is placing a piece of meat outside and using it to attract flys. A streetlight i another good place to try; at night, moths and other bugs show up and you can net them.

As for captive food, small crickets, mealworms, waxworms and the like are fine as food for ground skinks. Dust crickets with a clacium/D3 supplement and gut load them as well. Feed lizard every other day if it is an adult, if it is a baby, everyday. Offer no more than six and no fewer than two crickets at a time. Would recommend removing extra uneaten crickets and mealworms from the tank at night, or they may chew on the lizard while it sleeps.

....it's such a 'serious' race...that's why it's funny!
And it's good advice you give too.
Susan :0)

Skinks will often take dead food they find with their tongues, so you can put some killed small crickets in tjo see if yours will eat them. Also, raise flour beetles--those tiny brown beetles that get into you flour and corn meal. They are tenebrionids, like mealworms, and have tiny mealworm-like larvae and tiny pupae that you can leave in the cage for the skink to find by taste, in addition to the beetles themselves.