Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I feed my parrots, greens , tortoise and cyclura Zupreem fruit blend parrot food. Recently the cyclura has been "demanding" it every morning and if she doesnt get it she gets very hissy and neurotic. She gets fully nutrtionally balanced salads every other day and is weighing it at 13 lbs at 5 years old. It seems that her stool is sort of loose and smelly and I'm concerned shes devouring too much of the zupreem which doesnt contain alfafa/hay as a bulking agent.

My question is, If you use Mazuri tortoise, Do you feed it dry? Are the pellets too big for them to eat? Any sugestions on what to do? (I gave her cherrios, rice crispies and grape nuts this morning instead...she looked at me like I was insane and then ate it begrugingly.)

I feed it to my little guy Samson daily, along with greens when I have them. I normally put it in warm water, tell its soft, then feed it to him that way. I have seen on youtube people feeding it dry, but have never tried it. Another tip is to go to your local feed store and see if they carry it or can order it. Its much cheaper then buying it from a pet store or online. Hope this helps

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-Robert

"The difference between 'involvement' and 'commitment' is like an egg-and-ham breakfast: the chicken was 'involved' - the pig was 'committed'."

I think you should send your iguana to REHAB LOL just kidding =P

Cute rhino you got there Robert! =)

zupreem parrot rehab for cycluras that have "species identity disorder"...addicted to the fruitblend and bread with peanut butter- some serious munchees

LOL

Kismet loves Zupreem too. She "forages" around the bird cages everyday. Unfortunately, she also discovered dog food during one of her forages and now I have to lock her up when I feed the dogs. She will starve herself and then go look into the dogs empty dishes and then up at me to fill it. When I tell her dog food is bad and she can't have any she goes and sulks under the dresser. Talk about a lizard who needs rehab! Maybe they can get adjoining rooms and keep each other company! lol

hes got some serious rusty/orange going on. petra has none of that...

aww he still doesnt have his horns a baby

I feed it moistened. I soak it for about a minute or so. If you soak it too long it turns to mush.

It can be fed dry, but if you do, make sure to have plenty of water available.

And the pellets are not too big. Even small cyclura can scarf them down pretty easily.

Good luck.

-Michael

I'm hijacking a little here, but it's related. We tried Mazuri both wet and dry, but Kismet wanted no part of it. Any ideas on how to get her to eat it?

I had that issue with Sam, The way i found to get him to eat it was mixing it with a lil fruit at first..then just the juice of the fruit...now he actually prefers it to greens most days!
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-Robert

"The difference between 'involvement' and 'commitment' is like an egg-and-ham breakfast: the chicken was 'involved' - the pig was 'committed'."

You have to be careful. Feed it too much dry pellets can dehydrate your animals when the gut pulls out water to digest it. I've heard people soaking the dry food in fruit juice to soften it and some people use water. Almost all the things they eat in the wild have moisture in them at certain percentage. Even live preys have moisture in them. Snakes can much of the needed moisture from the rodents they eat. Hope this helps!

I feed my greens and similis a lot of hard veggies a long with leafy green veggies. I find it they are far more nutritious than the leafy greens and provide them with a lot of carbohydrate and roughage. Things like parsnips, turnip bulbs, beans in the edible pods (green beans, snow peas, string beans, etc..,) winter squash....are all good. My greens actually bulk up pretty quickly eating this stuff. He and my similis actually prefer the hard veggies over leafy greens now. My green is a very robust looking male because I feed him the hard veggies.

Buddy likes Kix and bananas for a treat

Whoa! That is the biggest Rhino I have ever seen! Very nice!

He is not that big. I got him closer to the camera!!