Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Anyone have any proof of raw ground turkey problems. Lizard or human related?

anyone ever raised and bred a lizard off only ground turkey??

I hope you are joking. Great food, but not a complete food. It is obvious that ground turkey is better un-cooked for nutritional needs, if included with other foods to balance their diet. But as far as having any bacteria problems from this I am not aware and was hoping to get some information.
To be honest, having monitors in the past, I was only selling them and fed live mice or rats daily due to easy access. Now that I am not selling and getting back into the hobby, trying to breed and make the best setting for my lizards...I want to find out more facts even though I do have a fairly good background.
Any breeding I have done was with various smaller lizards that did well on insects and a vitamin/mineral dusting. I dust crickets for my monitors as well as feed mice on accassion, and turkey on a daily basis. Sound like I need to make any changes?
Shane

Actually, when I was doing the research on this diet, I fed a pair of ackies nothing but the turkey mix. They produced three clutches without a hitch (and yes, the babies all hatched). I then sold them to move to Australia. And I have never heard of a bacterial problem with the mix.

nice...did you use any vitamin/minerals in the mix?

Yes, the recipe (which we actually studied Komodos with, hence the large amounts) calls for:

10 lbs. ground turkey
90 grams steamed bonemeal
2 crushed Centrum tablets

It is all mixed together, then we feed it in smaller meatballs and/or freeze into portions

it seems word of mouth becomes fact very quikly in the herptalogical world; one person says "i think turky could be bad" the next says "the turky is bad" then the people on this forum say "NEVER use turkey it has NO nutritional value whatsoever you might as well feed your monitor formaldahyde cause youll need it sooner or later!" Ok, maybe not quite the way i put it but you get the point.

My monitors prefer ground turky over thawed mice, live mice is a whole other story though, I have yet to see a live mouse live for more than .000327 seconds after hitting the sand, i dont even have time to feel sorry for it.

thanx 4 the info

I actually was the one who did the formal research. The research paper (on Komodos) is available at Zoo Biology. Its funny how people here listen to one or two people (who probably have never read the paper), then talk badly about the turkey diet. It is actually almost identical to a mouse, without the hair. I still use turkey on my prasinus and she will take it over a mouse any day of the week. The one problem is the turkey brand, some brands can make runny stools, but this is easily fixed with any type of fiber mixed into the turkey.

You might want to explain what the diet actually is, otherwise someone will feed straight turkey.

Hope all is well with you and yours.

NO worries, good call. Hope all is well in your neck o' the woods!

Are you guys talking about whole ground turkey, or just ground turkey meat?

I was under the impression that whole body diets were ideal, with both a rodent/bird and insect component.

Of course the turkey doesn't sound bad (unless left on the counter over the weekend), but incomplete. I find it hard to believe that some bone meal and a centrum tablet will suffice in providing optimum nutrition.

Were long term feeding trials done? Bloodwork to go along with body condition scores? I wouldn't go on animals breeding as the cornerstone of health; just a sign that husbandry and diet are "good enough". What were these animals like as geriatrics?

Just some questions to ponder as we all sometimes forget that what happens in our youth carries on forever. Remember in the 80's when all the dog food fed iggies where in renal failure? Not that extreme, but you get the picture...

Ian

ps, I guess I didn't look hard enough, because I never found the paper

We are talking about ground turkey for human consumption - not whole bird. The diet was designed in part by the SDZ nutritionist and we ran trials, growth, bloodwork, etc for about 2-2.5 years. The dragons are still doing great.

It's a start, but incomplete at only 2-3 years. If the trend says they're doing good though...

What is the nutritional breakdown as compared to a rodent or other traditional prey? I"m sure they'd have data on that... was there a different way I could find that paper?

Ian