Reptile & Amphibian Forums

With all the recent posts about chucks drinking water, I'm going nuts worrying about my chucks' water consumption. I've kept chucks for a LONG time and have never kept water in their cages, offering it only in a gravy spoon, several times a day, when needed (like before and after egg-laying). Today, I gave all my chucks chopped-up seedless grapes for the first time ever, thinking that it would give them a lot of extra water if they were thirsty. Most of the chucks seemed to relish the grapes. However, now I'm concerned that eating all that juice might bring on an upper respiratory infection if some of the juice 'goes down the wrong pipe.' Does it sound like a good idea to feed chucks grapes, or is this asking for trouble? I doubt that grapes are ever found in chucks' natural habitat.

them grapes but I would only do it as a treat because of other problems as far as nutrition and too much water in the diet. All this talk about lung problems etc I have never had any problems like that and I soak mine once a month in the bathtub just to clean the little pigs up. LOL. Tom

Great ... good to know that grapes are just a snack. Thanks for that info!

I used to soak uros, several at a time in the same tub. They'd stand on each others' heads and thus submerge each other. I finally caught on that they're clueless that they need to stop breathing while under water. Several got pneumonia and died. So I stopped the baths. My chucks don't get baths any longer due to URI worries. How do your chuck baths work? Do you bathe one at a time? Warm or VERY warm water? How deep? You got that right about their NEED for baths! They routinely mess all over each other and couldn't care less!

My Chucks get grapes, but not as a steady diet. As Tom says, a treat! I have been keeping Chucks for 46 years and never had a problem I could lay at the door of grapes. However, fruit is always a treat, and never a steady diet. BTW, NO Chuck of mine has ever had water in the cage since I was thirteen years old and learned what hideous things happen to Chucks in a damp humid cage. It ain't pretty. Also, I have NEVER before had any lung problems. This is a first for me.

Yeah Maureen, same here ... LONG history of keeping chucks without water and they've done just fine, lung-wise. Guess I'll
'chuck' my hysteria over watering chucks and concentrate on my egg-binding problems! Now's a good time to go ahead and post that question right now that you told me to ask!