Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I work for a pet shop and we were unexpectedly shipped some bts's. I read somewhere that you can feed them dog/cat food as well as minced greens. My question is what type of dog/cat food? canned or "kibbles?" Also does anyone have a recomendation for a specific flavor? They don't seem to have touched their crickets.
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0.1 Snow Corn "Hope"
1. Orange Albino Black Ratsnake "Chunk" (Goonies)
.1 Orange Albino Black Ratsnake "Peaches"
0.0.1 MO Locale Black Ratsnake "Molly" (Flogging Molly)

"I'll be whatever I wanna do!"

Also, an afterthought. The only available fridge is in the kennell so it probably would be unreasonable to ask to store large quantities of fresh vegetables in there. Would you advise adding some baby food such as mashed peas & carrots to the diet? Also, we have a large assortment of reptile vitamins available but all we carry is species specific (leopard gecko, iguana, chameleon, etc.) We do however have a surplus of calci-sand. Would you recommend I sprinkle a small amount in the food or can this still cause impaction?
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0.1 Snow Corn "Hope"
1. Orange Albino Black Ratsnake "Chunk" (Goonies)
.1 Orange Albino Black Ratsnake "Peaches"
0.0.1 MO Locale Black Ratsnake "Molly" (Flogging Molly)

"I'll be whatever I wanna do!"

You can feed a high quality cat food or dog food to blue tongue skinks, as well as greens and vegetables. Blue tongues will eat crickets but I find they do not move fast enough to really catch them. Superworms, silkworms, butterworms, roaches etc are good insects to feed blue tongues. Should also use Canned dog/cat food. I do not think the kibble will be good at all, unless ground up and moistened, which is just too much work to make it worth while.

Regular multivitamins for reptiles will be fine for blue tongues. I don't recommend putting calci sand anywhere near any reptile, much less sprinkling it on their food. Calcium sand it about a million times more coarse and grainier than calcium powder, thus that much more difficult to digest (if it even digests at all, tests done on it have proved it doesn't break down at all in acid, in fact actually starts to neutralize acid if in large enough quantities. It also tends to clump up). A fine calcium powder is good to give to blue tongue skinks. Powders designed for any omnivorous reptile will be fine for skinks as well.

Blue tongue skinks can also eat pinky mice but not as a steady diet.

Using a good heat lamp and a UVB light is recommended. It isn't really known if BTS need the UVB light but it definitely won't hurt them having it. For substrate, paper towel is fine. Large grade mulch can be used (I say large grade to indicate the pieces of bark etc, should be too big to swollow). Avoid ceder shavings or mulch. Also avoid pine shavings. Aspen shavings can be used but as this tends to be small, I suggest some sort of covering placed ontop when feeding, to avoid/limit accidental ingestion of substrate.

For more care info about BTS, www.bluetongueskinks.net is a great site.

Thank you very much for your reply. I am still curious about mixing in the vegetable baby food as an additive. I want to be sure they get a well rounded diet but also don't expect the owners to go grociery shopping for them. Would the baby food work well?
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0.1 Snow Corn "Hope"
1. Orange Albino Black Ratsnake "Chunk" (Goonies)
.1 Orange Albino Black Ratsnake "Peaches"
0.0.1 MO Locale Black Ratsnake "Molly" (Flogging Molly)

"I'll be whatever I wanna do!"

stay away from carots and peas and bts's also love snails with bts's a diet should normally cosist of 50% meats, 40% vegtables, and 10% fruit hope all turns out well

"This species, like the bearded dragon, is omnivorous. Many people feed blue-tongues high quality low fat dog or cat food mixed with fruits and vegetables such as green beans, squash, collard greens, mustard greens, carrots, peas, papaya, kiwi, melon, and zucchini. The diet should be as varied as possible. Many blue-tongues also relish mealworms and crickets."

This is an excerpt from "The Best Reptiles For Beginning Hobbyists" by Petra Spiess. Is this incorrect?
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0.1 Snow Corn "Hope"
1. Orange Albino Black Ratsnake "Chunk" (Goonies)
.1 Orange Albino Black Ratsnake "Peaches"
0.0.1 MO Locale Black Ratsnake "Molly" (Flogging Molly)

"I'll be whatever I wanna do!"

>>"This species, like the bearded dragon, is omnivorous. Many people feed blue-tongues high quality low fat dog or cat food mixed with fruits and vegetables such as green beans, squash, collard greens, mustard greens, carrots, peas, papaya, kiwi, melon, and zucchini. The diet should be as varied as possible. Many blue-tongues also relish mealworms and crickets."
>>
>>This is an excerpt from "The Best Reptiles For Beginning Hobbyists" by Petra Spiess. Is this incorrect?

This is essentially correct.
You can add baby food to the canned pet food if there isn't any veggies handy - trust me, they will gobble it up. You can use squash baby food or sweet potatoes - along with applesauce and other fruits. The problem is they will get spoiled and won't eat their regular veggies in the future.

When we have a litter, we use a lot of baby food the first 6 months - that and pureed foods that I cook. After that, they start getting a more chunky dinner.

While I cook lots of turkey and chicken for ours - they will get some high-quality canned pet foods too. Peas and carrots certainly are nutritious, but corn hasn't got much value (even though everyone likes it). They like berries and other fruits too, so you can add that to the list above.

Have fun with the dinners.

Morgana

carrots arent bad if you chop them up small.

Please visit www.bluetongueskinks.net for a wonderful food/nutrition chart designed for blueys.

I use a Mini-Chopper by black&Decker to chop up the veggies before adding any meat.

Spaghetti Squash is my favorite to feed...it comes in strands which makes it easy to chop up.
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1 Eastern Blue Tongue Skink
2 Tarahumara Mountain Kingsnakes - Knoblochi
1 Thayer's Kingsnake - Thayeri
2 Golden Greek Tortoises
1 Pyxie Frog - 14 years old