Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hey I have 2 fire skinks and I was wondering how many crickets do I feed them and how often and if I want to feed them cat food or fruits or mail worms do I just put the bowl in their cage and wait?

I have a 18x18x18 exo terra and the guy said that's fine for 2

Also as far as earthworms can they just go in the dirt or a feeding dish or what

Skinks are typically fed about every other day, depending on the size and kind of food being fed.

If you choose to feed your skinks live crickets, you might find it helpful to keep a small cricket tank. Just a small container (old 5-10 gallon tank) filled with a good thick layer of potting soil, and you put in old veggies, garden scraps, cereal, whatever--feed them calcium supplements too for the lizards sake. Old lid with wet paper towels. egg cartons. keep soil moist. you can also use this exact same set-up for super worms and roly-polies/isopods (excellent source of bio-ready calcium).

now you can buy like 40 crickets and dump them into that tank and feed your skinks a few at a time, instead of overwhelming the cage with a cricket dump.

i recommend using surgical forceps (giant tweezers) to feed your skinks their crickets one at a time. that way you know how many they eat and you can keep track of the crickets as well.

However you feed them, dust with calcium with vitamin D for their metabolic health.

And the question of how many to feed? Depends on how hungry they are and how big the crickets are! If you are just releasing the crickets into the cage, start small, just 2-3 crickets per skink. If they eat them all, observe their behavior to see if they are still hungry. Do they run around with searching behavior, tongue flicking and looking around. Or do they go to the basking area and stretch out. If you decide to feed them more, just give 1-2. It's okay if they still seem a little hungry because they will settle down. A meal of five crickets would be a good size meal for a fire skink that is fed every other day.

introducing earthworms into the dirt of their enclosure would be an *excellent* enrichment! Rolie-polies, a.k.a. isopods would also be an excellent organism to introduce into their enclosure. I am assuming that you have a nice thick layer of soil for them to dig in? Earthen potting soil, mixed with coconut fiber.
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Lisa Rakestraw
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My skinks:
1.1 Corucia zebrata (Joni and Kid Charlemagne)
0.1 Eumeces schneideri (Mabel)

hi ive been working with these amazing skinks for quite sometime i recommend feeding daily for babies and every two days for adults fruits should only be given once monthly. and cat food is typically not recommended because of the extremely high or extremely low protein levels depending on the brand. you can offer it with the fruit once monthly. crickets, mealworms, and superworms should be your staple diet and are relatively. hope you have success!! reptilelover100.

sorry for the typo i meant to say at the end relatively cheap