Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I seem to be getting mixed messages from friends and no information from the internet on the placement of my uro's food dish. Should it be placed on the basking side, or should it be shaded from the heat? My guess would be shaded because the heat will evaporate the water from the food, but my friend says she read that it should be placed on the basking side.

I put mine on the cool side. The greens don't dry out as fast. I've never really seen anything at all about a correct side to put food. I'm pretty sure every (almost every...) picture I've seen also has it on the cool side. Some have had it close to the middle. Honestly, I don't think it'd matter other than the fact that if the uro only gets dried out greens all the time, it'd start to get dehydrated.

We have lizards that get up early & some that sleep late. As a rule, during weekdays, we prefer to feed on the "cool" side so's to accomodate the late sleepers with still moist greens. On weekends we wait until they're all up & about before offering anything.
If you offer food on the hot side to a late-sleeper, it's as bad as putting a water bowl under a heat lamp to any other animal. You'll breed bacteria. Well, more than that, it's greens jerky.
Unless you're home to observe their activity, I'd advise the cool end.

I spread some around and keep the dish onthe cool side. The veggies and greens will loose nutritional value in the heat it sucls up everything.

Wow I've never heard that before. What specific nutrients do the greens lose when they dry up?

Not to mention the moisture loss.

Calcuim, vitamins , any nutritional value it had!

I was interested in what you would say. I don't doubt that it causes the loss of some vitamins. very small amounts of A, C breaks down in heat, one or two B vitamins are unstable with heat... but calcium is simply wrong. Heat doesn't destroy minerals. Especially 100-110 degree heat... The dried greens still retain a large amount of their nutritional value. It's similar to dehydrating fruits and vegetables, minus blanching.

It still doesn't make sense to put greens on the hot side, but dried greens (and heated to 100 maybe 120-125 UNDER a basking light haha) definitely still have almost all of their nuritional value.

I put my uro's food dish on the cool side. More so just because they seem to like it better when it is relatively moist and not dried out. I saw that some have already mentioned the fact that the heat will dehydrate food which will keep the moisture from the lizard which is were the lizard gets the majority of its water from its food.

Yes completely correct!