Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have a spectacled caimen who will hartely eat fish,mice,and other types of live prey,but try as I can I cannot get him to eat non living food.Any suggestions on ways to encourage him to eat pre-killed or non living food items,any feed back appreciated,thanx...Drewsky.

I could say to go through the fresh kill and gradually increase the time since the kill, but I'm more inclined to advise that you just let it get hungry. If it has good body weight, there would be no harm in letting it go a month (or more).

One question first, is it being feed in an area and at a time of day where is feels secure? It might be taking the live prey because it's still there when it's ready to eat - as opposed to you pulling the food out after an unsuccessful attempt. If you have not already done so, let the caiman get good and hungry and then try putting the food at the waters edge at night. Then turn out the lights in both the tank and the room and just wait it out for a day and see what happens.

Specs are usually good feeders so this one should come around.

Bill

Bill is right on. We have taken in several similar cases at our wildlife center and we used two methods to induce feeding on dead prey (assuming the animal is in reasonably good health) 1) Fast the croc for a 2-3 weeks (absolutely no harm will come to a healthy croc) and 2) Feed when the lights are subdued and there are no distractions and the setting is nice and quiet. Just following these two things, as Bill described, will usually result in success; particularly with specs who are typically very aggressive feeders.

Rob Carmichael, Director/Curator
The Wildlife Discovery Center
City of Lake Forest Parks & Recreation (IL)