Reptile & Amphibian Forums

my new tokay won't eat pinkies. i left a pinkie in the tank all night but it was still there in the morning. the shop i got it from said they recieved it from florida, so i am assuming it was wild caught. would this make a difference? how can i get "Thrasher" to eat pinkies?

Why do you want it to eat pinkies so bad? There are so many other better things for it to eat. pinkies should only be fed to egg laying females, emaciated animals, and as a occasional treat. If you really want it to eat a pinky try a live one if this time you tried a f/t.
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Jeremy Carroll
Center for Reptile and Amphibian Propagation and Conservation
http://www.onet.net/~eagle/Reptile/index.htm

Maybe hes not hungry? I have left giant silkworms, twice the size of my tokay, in the tank for 2 days and on the third I noticed it was gone and he was a little fatter. Wait a day or two he'll probably eat it. Also, how big is he? Might not be a good idea when theyre young.....

Dont worry about it. young or freshly wild caught tokays are often afraid of rodents, because rodents can easily maim a small or severely stressed animal. I have a snake who had his eye bitten through by a mouse before I got him, they do have very sharp teeth. So let him get older, or acclimate and then he should eat pinks with gusto. but there is a drawback on pinks, they have a lot of fat in them and although tokays love them, you shouldnt feed your precious lizard very many, because fat can damage thair livers and kill them prematurely. My big male LOVES pinks, but was terrified of them until he was about 2 years old.
good luck and have fun!

my tokay is about 9 inches long. the pinkie was alive, but only a few days old so i couldn't leave it in the tank any longer or it would have starved to death.

also, it was a rat pinkie, not a mouse pinkie. but the rat pinkie was still smaller then the gecko's head.

All mine will eat live pinkies but I notice that sometimes one or two wont.Some Geckos will never aquire a taste for them. Some of my Leos love them and some have never even looked at them twice. I wouldnt worry but keep trying and use live ones till they get used to them. As noted in other replys I only give them as a treat at the most one each a month and thats for my gravid females, my male one every couple months. I had a great pic I would have loved to share on this but lost it when my hard drive crashed along with about 500 others, sad.
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My posts and replies are my experiences only
1.2.3 Tokays
1.4.0 Leos(3 albino)
0.0.2 AFT's

i got a adult mouse from the pet shop that was actually smaller then the rat pinkies. within 3 minutes Thrasher had grabbed the mouse and started slaming it against the tank side