Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Where to begin? I'm no stranger to chucks as I've kept a few in my own personal collection in years past. Right now though I'm baffled.

I'm the Naturalist at the Las Cruces Museum of Natural History. I oversee our living and non-living animal collection, which is mostly herps native to NM or the Chihuahuan Desert. A few months back I was offered a WC male chuck from an alumni from Indiana Univ. The chuck has been in captivity for approximately 4 years and before we obtained him he was an apparent garbage disposal when it came to food. We've had him in our care since June.

Initially, while I was setting up a new habitat for him, our collared lizards, and great plains skink, he resided at my home. His eating habits were pretty weak when I got him. Temps checked out fine, etc. He just wasn't too keen on eating for a little while, and I wasn't too concerned because of the whole moving thing and getting use to a new habitat. Once he and his cage-mates' habitat was set up he was moved over to the museum. He began eating much better once here at the museum.

My concern now though is he's not maintaining weight, but is instead loosing it. His cage mates are parasite free so I'm pretty confident in ruling that out; not to mention he's been in captivity for years now without any known issues and maintained weight fine. Plus I'm not sure if much has changed since I last kept chucks on a personal level (years ago), but if I recall right treating them for parasites can do more harm for them than good because of beneficial bioflora/fauna that gets knocked out through treatment.

Here's a few vitals:

Basking temps:
- rock surface 116°F as of noon
- air temp 83.7°F as of noon

Cold end of Habitat:
- 76.5°F as of noon

Night lows:
- cold end 68.0°F
- basking end 68.7°F

Cage Dimensions (inside):
10ft 11in long X 3ft 11in wide X 4ft tall

Basking area is approx. 1.75ft below a ActiveUV 100w Flood (heating and UV) and 100w GE Reveal (additional heating and low yield UV). Remaining cage lighting are 2 48in ReptiSun 5.0 and 2 48in Phillips Daylight fluoroscents.

Food:
collard greens
turnip green
escarole
red leaf lettuce
romaine lettuce
dandelion flowers (when available)
angelita daisy flowers (when available)
shredded carrots
shredded butternut squash
shredded yellow squash
all dusted with miner-al indoor (every other feeding) and herptivite (once a week, not mixed with miner-al)
when the chuck was at IU...."What I was feeding him when I was at IU was a mixture of greens (collareds, mustard, arugula, beet, etc...), veggies (red pepper, carrots, yellow squash, zucchini, etc...) & flowers (mostly dandelion, also whatever else seemed edible & handy)..."

He does eat now, but I'm wondering if temps aren't getting hot enough for him to properly metabolise and maintain his weight, in other words, high enough for him to eat and do some digesting, but low enough to keep his metabolism going to cause him to dip into his fat stores.

Replies can be made here or e-mailed to me.

Thanks,
Chris Newsom
Naturalist
Las Cruces Museum of Natural History
cnewsom@las-cruces.org

Could he be trying to hibernate? What kind of timer are the lights on? Is he behaving normally, out basking etc or is he mainly hiding? What was he used to eating with his previous owner (someone posted below about a chuck having weight and eating issues, until he found out that she was used to eating frozen veggie mixes)? How was it presented (my chucks are very particular about their bowls, they have two faux rock ones they like, they won't eat out of the ceramics)? How do his poos look? Are you mixing in supplements (some chucks find these unpalatable)?

I'm really not sure what could be wrong. Maybe an infection or an overgrowth of some parasite? I've read some interesting articles about herps using heat to regulate their parasite loads, and using heat as a way to artificially induce a fever to combat infection. Although your temps sound fine, if you have a cage big enough to take it, you could try a basking site with a 130F surface temp (I know some monitor owners that provide 150, but I imagine you'd have to be really careful about burns) and see if he uses it. If he doesn't want to be out in the open, you could have the light shime on a rock that he can hide under.

It could still be acclimation issues too, they don't like change.

-Alice

Do you know if it has brumated in the past? If so it may be slowing down its eating in preparation for that. If that is the case you don't want to allow underweight animal to brumate. Maintain your photoperiod and day/night temps.I would feed it more of what it wants to eat. It would appear that you have offered a varied diet. Try and see what it likes and give it more of that until its weight returns. If it just maintains weight for awhile I would not worry about it. If it starts utilizing its fat reserves then I would get a fecal culture go from there. JMO