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Did I give too big of prey to my gecko?

reptilesrock Jul 22, 2012 04:15 PM

Hello all,

I just need to get some feedback to put my mind at ease right now. I just finished feeding 2 medium tomato horned worms to my adult female leo. She is a pig and she ate them both straight away. I noticed then she was having some trouble getting the second one down and when I came back about a minute later, she had regurgitated them both back up. I think it was a stupid decision to feed them the size of worms they were. I was even questioning if they were a bit on the big side for the geckos. Bottom line, she puked them up again, so they are out of her system and she seems perfectly fine, almost like she wants food again and she's walking around normally. I guess my concern is though, that since she swallowed them beforehand, because of there size, could they have done some damage internally, like stretched something too big, tore something or ruptured something??? I think I would have known if she did because if something was wrong she probably wouldn't be as active after she regurged. But just wanted to see what other ppl said. My other adult female also ate one worm the same size and so far, she has held it down. I think from now on, I will go a size smaller for the horned worms.

Replies (1)

jaguara Aug 01, 2012 08:32 AM

None of mine will go for food that they think is too big- it's wired in their brains I guess. That doesn't speak for all though- it got regurgitated because the body detected something wrong with the food. It's not as damaging as a snake regurgitating its food, but if something was ruptured or torn it would probably be in a bit of pain and acting funky. As long as it's acting fine and eating I wouldn't worry too much about it. Try regular gutloaded crickets and mealworms and see if the basics are ok with its stomach.

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