Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Seeing that I had found one of my niles munching on marshall ferret food, would it be okay to ocasionally put that in their diet? I really dont see a problem with it since ferrets are obligate carnivores and so are niles which would have similar but not the exact same diet requirements. I KNOW!!!! THEY ARE NOT THE SAME ANIMAL AND I AM NOT ABUSEING OR KILLING MY ANIMAL>.
I just had to say that the way people react around here sometimes. lol

Hehe, its true, people on the KS monitor forum will lose their heads at a moments notice.

As far as the ferret diet.... well, heres what I would suggest.

First, find out EXACTLY what the ingredients are in that stuff- many times animal diets have "fillers" designed to fulfill a nutritional requirement, especially in omnivorous creatures. Other times, fillers are used to simply give the diet more substance.

Whatever the case, these fillers are often plant/grain based, and as such wouldnt be very good for your monitor.

To tell you the truth- If it were me, Id just stick to whole prey items. No risk there.

But if you REALLY wanna try incorporating this; I think the best thing to do would be to find out if anything in said substance could negatively affect your monitor.

Thanks for the info! I don't feed him "pet food" on a regular basis. It just so happens that just a few days ago, he escaped while I was distracted and I figured he would turn up. I have a reptile room thats escape proof so I wasn't worried, but when I went to feed my ferrets I found him in the container munching on ferret food which the container is about 2x his height. I feed a diet of rodents and bugs mainly, they don't seem to like fish as much. I know thats ferrets cant really handle too much carbs either. They are canavores through and through which I also feed them the highest protein food I can find which happens to be the Marshall ferret food which is much higher in protien than cat or dog food. I was just kind of entertaining the Idea because he went through alot of work to get to the food of which he wouldn't do unless he really wanted it. lol

Hello Mantafish,

First, feed your Nile whole live or dead food items(like you have been). You provide them, It will pick which ones It wants to eat. Okay, now thats out of my system... If you happen to fall on a day of food drought- give it food- whatever this might be... It is better than starving it. By no way should you supply the junk food as a staple- even warmblooded ferrets can get fat on their food, not always, but can. Best thing for ferrets is whole mice too, what does that tell you?... Monitors will definitely scavenge on human trash food and other stuff from time to time and you sound mature and intelligent enough not to kill your monitor by making the ferret junk any part of it's primary diet-so again, ya hit a drought, use it (for a day) - but remember, it's still junk... Best to you- Mike