Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I've had my juv. captive bred black roughneck (V. rudicollis) for a year and a half now, and she's doing really well. About four months ago she started ignoring crickets, unless they were flailing in her water dish. I'd always fed a diet of mice, rats, and crickets, with mealworms and waxworms offered as supplement though she never took insects, though they were offered frequently. I was worried that without insects in her diet she'd loose a valuable source of nutrients, so I began offering a little bit of wet cat food, like those little cans of Fancy Feast, to add variety to the now rodent diet. Her response was incredible, she actually prefers the cat food to mice. I also noticed an increase in her growth rate. I decided to carefully watch her and make a full switch to cat food as opposed to the rodents. Now she eats processed diets of turkey, fish, beef, liver, giblets, and chicken. Her stools are the same as before, she's gaining weight and length, but I've heard a lot of negative things about feeding processed diets. She still refuses to take insects for extra roughage, even in her water dish, though I offer them occasionally. Am I missing a downside to this? She eats out of a bowl, no blood and gore all over her habitat, it only costs 30 cents a feeding, and she's growing like a weed.

V.Rudicolis eats frogs, insects, as well as other aquatic and terrestrial inverts.
Commercial feline preperations are not appropriate for varanids, and will cause a variety of long term problems regardless of the growth rate you are now witnessing.
High quality preparations such as those used by zoos to feed their large cats may be a bit more appropreate as they are formulated with the well being the carnivore in mind, and lack fillers and other chemical nasties.
Try fish, crayfish, hissing cockroaches, small rodents, balut, crab, etc.
Emphasis should be on whole food items, (whole crayfish, roaches, balut, etc)

Cheers
Jim

That's what I was wondering about. It's been really difficult to get her to eat insects in general, though she might be threatened enough by a hisser to attack it and find out it's tasty. I hadn't thought about crayfish, though I have concerns about the parasites those guys can sometimes carry. I could also see hunting fish in her tub as a great way to enrich her daily routine of basking, soaking, sleeping and going on walks outside. I'm also wondering if this incredible growth rate might be problematic, as when dogs are fed only the best meat in abundance, they grow too fast and develop joint problems among other things. I think I'll use her love of cat food to transition to a more broad diet by dunking critters in cat food juice. Thanks for responding so quickly, I wanted to hear feedback about what I was doing before it continued any longer.

So...on the topic of cat food vs. canned diets, I'm not advocating anything, but I'm trying to figure out what potential dangers there are. In trying to learn about what's in canned diests for monitors I noticed that it's really really close to common commercial pet food. For example, Zupreem brand monitor diet, off of the Zupreem site, has:

Crude Protein Not less than 10.0%
Crude Fat Not less than 6.0%
Crude Fiber Not greater than 1.0%
Moisture Not greater than 78.0%

Compare to Friskee's Fancy Feast for cats:

Crude Protein Not less than 11.0%
Crude Fat Not less than 4.0%
Crude Fiber Not greater than 1.5%
Moisture Not greater than 78.0%

So the monitor diet has slightly less fiber, and slightly more fat. Also, the only additives that aren't vitamins in the cat food are falvorings, that are natural and USDA approved (or at least, so says the Friskee's site) for human consumption and guar gum. Guar gum is to bind and hydrate the cat food, and it's a natural product--in other words really benign stuff. The main ingredients are the same, except the cat food uses more whole ingredients and fish and beef broth instead of water. While cats and lizards have different vitamin needs, and the very different metabolism of a lizard has to be carefully considered, what's wrong with giving more vitamins and minerals, especially water souluable ones? Obviously none of this matters if the Zupreem diet is worthless and the animals on it sicken, but I'm wondering if a lot of the vague "pet food will seriously hurt you monitor in the long run, if you're going to go with processed then use monitor food" has a lot of basis to it? I mean, I really doubt there's been an established colony of several hundred monitor lizards for the goal of discovering their nutritional needs as there has been for domestics--I'm thinking a lot of what we know about their needs is from guesswork, and observation of wild habits, which is useful but might not provide all the answers.