Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hey yall,
I stumbled across something that I wanted to get your opinions on. Before I started keeping and rehabilitating chucks, I read everything that I could find on them, including the very best paper written on them by Richard Montanucci. I thought I had absorbed everything he had to say about diet and the excessive amount of water that captive chucks tend to get, particularly in store bought greens with high water content, like mustard and turnip greens. Those are very healthy greens, so I followed his advice and washed and dried my greens to the point of wilting before I fed them to the chucks. I also picked flowers for them until this past year when a developer bought the field behind my house and destroyed it to build a senior community.

Well, I did all of this and my chucks have been healthy, but they all had runny poop! I slipped into the mindset that this was just how their poop is until one that had unusually runny poop started losing weight this year. I talked to my good friend Maureen about it and our convos led me to revisit their diet, so I re read Richard's care sheet and found something that I had missed before. He suggests that dried alfalfa be added to the diet because it is high in fiber, which desert lizards need a lot of, and it helps absorb some of the moisture from the greens we feed them. So, I went out to buy alfalfa, and a few other things and I stumbled across Tortoise grassland pellets by zoo med on the reptile isle at the pet store. I read the ingredients and it has a ton of really great dried grasses and hays, so I took a jar home, put a handful in the coffee grinder, then sprinkled a moderate amount on their salad. I was worried that they wouldn't eat that day, but they did! They ate better than normal, in fact, so I have put this on their salad every day since and their stools are now droppings, they have more energy (that skinny guy has gone downright spastic with the head bobbing! LOL) and they are interested in breeding! It is quite obvious that they all feel better, as does the uro, the dipsos, the beardies, and even the collareds that get greens as well.

So, here is what I am talking about followed by the ingredient list. Do you think this is a good pellet to crush and sprinkle on their food, sort of as a supplement and source of fiber? I know the dryness and fiber have straightened out their guts, and some of these ingredients are great. I am just not sure about all of them for chucks.
http://www.reptilesupply.com/product.php?products_id=1881

INGREDIENTS:
Suncured Oat Hay, Suncured Timothy Hay, Soybean Hulls, Wheat Middlings, Suncured Alfalfa Meal, Whole Ground Wheat, Escarole, Endive, Calcium Carbonate, Monocalcium Phosphate, Dicalcium Phosphate, Yeast Culture, Dandelion Greens (dried), Sodium Bicarbonate, Soy Lecithin, Direct-Fed Microorganisms (heat stable cultures of Lactobacillus acidophilus, Lactobacillus casei, Bifidobacterium bifidum, Enterococcus faecium, Aspergillus oryzae), Yeast Extract, Hydrated Sodium Calcium Aluminosilicate, Garlic Extract, Anise Extract, Cassia Extract (Chinese), Ginger Extract, Horseradish Extract, Juniper Extract, Natural Flavoring, Marigold (petal extract), Yucca schidigera (whole plant powder), L-Ascorbyl-2-Polyphosphate (source of stabilized Vitamin C), Zinc Methionine Complex, Selenium Yeast, Vitamin E Supplement, Mixed Tocopherols, Rosemary Extract, Ascorbic Acid, Citric Acid, Lecithin, Silicon Dioxide, Choline Chloride, Vitamin A Supplement (Retinyl Acetate), Vitamin D3 Supplement, Niacin Supplement, d-Calcium Pantothenate (source of Vitamin B5), Menadione Sodium Bisulfite Complex (source of Vitamin K activity), Riboflavin Supplement (source of Vitamin B2), Thiamine Mononitrate (source of Vitamin B1), Pyridoxine Hydrochloride (source of Vitamin B6), Biotin, Folic Acid, Vitamin B12 Supplement, Zinc Oxide, Manganous Oxide, Ferrous Sulfate, Tribasic Copper Chloride, Calcium Iodate, Sodium Selenite.

GUARANTEED ANALYSIS:
Crude Protein (Min) 9.0%
Crude Fat (Min) 2.0%
Crude Fiber (Max) 26.0%
Moisture (Max) 13.0%
Ash (Max) 10.0%
Calcium (Min) 0.9%
Calcium (Max) 1.3%
Phosphorus (Min) 0.4%
Sodium (Max) 0.3%

http://www.uromastyx.org/tortoise-chow-as-a-supplement-t422.html

I am not ignoring yours or Maureen's messages just been really hectic here. I will try to get caught up this weekend. Sorry guys!
Tom

Tom,
Great to see you! Email me when you have time.

Do you know what kind of tort chow this is that they are discussing? I might have to jump into that forum and thread. Is it the mazuri chow they are talking about or the grassland pellets?

If these grassland pellets are not good for them, then I need to find a good source of fiber for them until I can grow weeds. The fiber has made a huge difference, but I don't want to make them sick! I'll jump in over there later today . . .

That's interesting! How does extra moisture affect their digestion? I would have thought extra liquid would have aided in digestion of the plants they eat. I have been feeding my Uromastyx wet greens for quite sometime and do not notice anything wrong with their feces...

He explains in this article that chucks have a water storage mechanism built into their physical makeup to help them get through droughts in their native landscape. Captive chucks don't face drought, so they carry excess fluid and have to release it. We don't know how this might impact their health long term, but it could. He says that wild chucks have well formed stools as opposed to our captive chucks who produce much looser stools. Do these looser stools pose a problem? I would say they do. For one thing, even if having runny poo doesn't dehydrate me, I feel back when I have it. I have to imagine that they don't feel great either. Also, if they have runny stools over a long period of time and it affects their appetite, which it did in one chuck here, they will get dehydrated from it as they will eat less and store less water. hat is what happened to this guy here. He had more runny stools than the others and he just didn't feel good. He lost weight and was staring to get dehydrated. Since I added these hay/grass based pellets, he is eating like a pig and is very active again.

The other issue in my chucks was fiber. Richard M. mentions in that article that chucks in the wild probably eat a lot more fiber than we feed them. Fiber keeps things moving just like it does in us, so we should pay attention to their need for it.

The person who reminded me to examine the amount of fluid my chucks were getting was Maureen, who has been keeping chucks since she was a kid. I won't say how long ago that was, Maureen. LOL! But her chucks live into their 20s, and she feeds them a diet much closer to their natural diet than I can. She grows flowers and buys greens at a farmers market, I think. She can confirm that. I have to find ways to make up for what I can't provide them until I can get some grasses, flowers and weeds going, and even then, I have to wonder if adding some dry vegetation, like hays, isn't a good idea.

Do you belong to any uro groups?

They have pasture grass seeds at the feed store you can buy... You can grow those for your chuck. I've been meaning to get some for my tortoise. and there is also timothy hay cube they sell at the feed store. You hydrate them by adding a little liquid to soften it so it is more appetizing and easier to eat.

Thanks for sharing the information with us!

My problem is that I have no yard. I live in a town house with a large patio area in the back. When I first started keeping chucks, there was a big field behind my house and I went out and picked for them daily, but a developer bought the property and destroyed the field.

I can grow some flowers and grasses in containers, but many need full sun, which I don't have. My ultimate goal in life is to get out of this area and this house, but until I can do that, I need to find a way to get more of what they need into their diet. These pellets, which are unlike typical chow, seem to have a lot of those ingredients in them. I also see a lot of new chuck keepers post what they are feeding their chucks and I thought that it was a good idea to get this convo about diet going.

A well balanced diet is probably impossible to create in captivity for herbivorous reptiles....even for dogs and cats. That's why they make dog and cat food and because there is a market for it. So it's a good idea to supplement with multivitamin and calcium supplements. But there's no need for that now. Mazuri has a lot of great food that can be used for these chuckwallas IMO. You can add the Mazuri tortoise pellets to their diet several times a week, the way they do it for the tortoises, to help round out and boost the nutrition of the limited captive diet. This is why tortoises are hard to raise in captivity from babies to adulthood... many suffer because they do not get a well balanced diet and develop deformed shell and MBD.

I never could get my chucks to eat their salad with ground mazuri tort chow on it, and if you follow the link to the thread that Tom posted, there might have been some issues with feeding it to chucks. It might not be all that good for them anyway.

This pellet is different. The first several ingredients could have come straight from a chuck's natural environment, and they aren't processed down to unrecognizable. When you crush these, the shake looks like ground dried grass and hay, and smells like it. So far, my chucks eat it well, and it has straightened out their watery stool issue completely. They are more active, they are gaining weight and they are exhibiting breeding behavior since I started feeding this to them. I still might not be working everything in that they would get in the wild with these pellets added to the fresh greens and veggies that I buy at the store, but you do the best you can, right?

Exactly! For some reason I thought people were using it with chuckwallas with great success. I shouldn't have opened my mouth because I have no experience with these lizards. I do want one really bad, though. Have you tried the iguana food instead and Repashy Super Veggies? Maybe that might work with better with them. Similar types of product but one is for a lizard closer to the chucks and the other (Super Veggies) is supposed round out and boost the nutritional value of the veggies.

lol Hun, those tiny packages that I saw when I looked that up would last for one feeding at this house! Can't afford that if you mean those little bags of veggies. But they do get frozen peas, beans, green beans, and carrots a few times per week, plus they get a variety of chopped squash, and iguana pellets and/or small bird pellets a few times per week in addition to the greens and ground grassland pellets. I am working on getting some container gardening started as well.

I couldn't find an ingredient list for that Repashy mix. Do you have a link for an ingredient list?

No, the Repashy Superveggies is a supplement that you sprinkle on the veggies to make it more complete. I think it's more like a complete food. You just sprinkle it on the veggies as stated on the direction on the bag. Here's the link:
http://www.store.repashy.com/repashy-superfoods/retail/all-in-one-supplements-en-2/

It's very difficult to recreate a balanced meal and we don't evne know for sure what they eat in the wild that makes it so complete... Even good, all natural, brand of dog and cat food have some vitamin added or some other stuff mixed in to make it complete. The Repashy Superveggie is made from all natural stuff that provide different sources of different kind of vitamins, minerals and trace elements.

Plus, you have to work with what's available at the supermarket and the nursery, which can be very difficult for a lot of people.

Yes, I know that supplements are necessary for captive animals of all kinds, but chucks haven't been in captivity or studied enough so that we know what supplements they really need. There is not supplement specifically for chucks, but from what I have read about tortoise environments, their diet is more similar to torts than green iguanas.

This looks like a really good supplement. However, many of the same ingredients are in these grassland pellets and my chucks get the added benefit of the fiber with the pellets. I will take a closer look at the ingredients of both tomorrow. I don't want to end up over supplementing. That can be deadly.

Have you try feeding parsnips? It is quite possibly the most nutritious vegetable in the world... Asparagus is trailing at close second, though. Be careful, Asparagus is a little high in calcium oxalate, so feed it less often than parsnips.

I think they have a similar product in Europe... If I remembered correctly, it's called Agrob, or something like that. It has a weird name.

Here it is:
suncharmers.com/files/Montanucci_chuckwalla_care.pdf

thank you for the link!