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i was just curious to know what everyone out there is feeding their hatchling argentine black and white tegus (or fed their tegus when they were hatchlings).

another thing... i'm breeding mice for my two hatchling tegus and two ball pythons. my tegus can easily scarf down large fuzzies/small hoppers, how often do you think they ought to be given the chance to do so?

well, here's what i've fed my li'l guys...

butch- hardboiled egg, steak, chicken, turkey, grouper, cat food, hoppers, fuzzies, pinkies, mealworms, crickets, grasshoppers, snails, and caterpillars. butch gets prekilled prey, frozen/thawed prey, and cooked prey.

sundance- live crickets, crickets, live pinkies, live fuzzies, hardboiled egg, snail, steak, grouper. he's not as willing to go for nonliving prey, i often give him a couple live crickets or a live pinky to jump start his feeding response and then introduce nonliving food.

i dust their food with calcium every second or third day (i feed them daily). i'm going to start dusting with miner-all as soon as it comes in... i usually just let them eat until they stop. anyhow, that's what's on their plate.

That sounds good, I feed my tegus a lot of what you said (minus the grass hoppers, snails, and caterpillars) and every once in awhile ham, cooked fish etc... One other thing I feed that would fall in the same category as snails is cooked mussels. Say where do you get the snails at anyways? Another thing try giving some fruit; it's never too early. I guess I should have started feeding fruit earlier cuz they don't like it much now. I'm just glad mine love the mussels cuz it's easy to put fruit inside that flap they have.

That all sounds good! I got mine when she was already around 14" and she has eaten fortified ground turkey, live crickets, super worms and pinkies. I also started her on fruit right away and she liked (and still likes) bananas, strawberries, nectarines, mangos and boiled, mashed sweet potatos. Currently, she is on a steady diet of the fortified ground turkey, mice and the above fruits. She's just under 3 feet now.

Billy

>>i was just curious to know what everyone out there is feeding their hatchling argentine black and white tegus (or fed their tegus when they were hatchlings).
>>
>>another thing... i'm breeding mice for my two hatchling tegus and two ball pythons. my tegus can easily scarf down large fuzzies/small hoppers, how often do you think they ought to be given the chance to do so?
>>
>>well, here's what i've fed my li'l guys...
>>
>>butch- hardboiled egg, steak, chicken, turkey, grouper, cat food, hoppers, fuzzies, pinkies, mealworms, crickets, grasshoppers, snails, and caterpillars. butch gets prekilled prey, frozen/thawed prey, and cooked prey.
>>
>>sundance- live crickets, crickets, live pinkies, live fuzzies, hardboiled egg, snail, steak, grouper. he's not as willing to go for nonliving prey, i often give him a couple live crickets or a live pinky to jump start his feeding response and then introduce nonliving food.
>>
>>i dust their food with calcium every second or third day (i feed them daily). i'm going to start dusting with miner-all as soon as it comes in... i usually just let them eat until they stop. anyhow, that's what's on their plate.

y'know, everyone here seems to follow the "more is better" mandate when it comes to feeding baby tegus. just because you can get someting to eat "x" amount doesn't mean that "x" amount isn't too much. i know that with snakes, this "powerfeeding" can lead to health problems down the road and a shorter life. whether or not this is applicable to tegus still remains to be seen. i think that there's still a lot we don't know about the ins and outs of these critters and their biology. i, personally, don't let my tegus gorge to the extent that some may, but i do let them eat quite a bit (they by no means go hungry and are in no way lethargic). i dunno. just something to think about. i know that they've actually done tests on mice where eating about a third as much food as what was considered normal lead to them living several months more than other mice (for a mouse, thos months mean a lot!). it has something to do with the amount of free radicals floating around causing cellular damage (aging). i read about it about a year ago in a National Geographic. i'm sure you could dig it up if you're really interested. not that i feed my tegus 1/3 portions, heck, i don't even know that this study would apply to cold blooded animals, i just thought it was interesting... that's all. can you have too much of a good thing???