Posted by:
ltllzrd
at Fri May 6 19:33:44 2011 [ Report Abuse ] [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by ltllzrd ]
I am a very experienced reptile keeper, actually. I have also worked with an exotic vet in a past life focusing primarily on reptiles. I know a lot of novices come on here - I was answering their questions and asking a lot of my own back in 1998. It seems we answer the same questions over and over again, doesn't it?
When I say I added romaine to the diet I mean one whole leaf every other meal or so. It is not replacing any more nutritious food. I live in Georgia and we just started turning our air-conditioning on, which dries the air a lot. Shenanigans does occasionally drink from a water bowl but she prefers to poop in it. Since she's not a little iguana changing the water bowl is actually not easy. She gets her water intake from heavy misting of her food and the food itself. When we build her new cage I'm going to install a drip system.
Her cage is very easy to keep clean - the tray in the bottom of it is covered with newspaper that gets changed when it's soiled. Her cage is in the den and no one wants to smell stinky iguana poop when they're watching TV! The cage allows her to be very arboreal in her behavior. She rarely goes to the bottom of the cage, but she climbs around quite a bit between her basking spot and the food and the middle branches.
Re: whole leaves versus chopped up - iguanas don't have anyone chopping up their food in the wild. Shenanigans eats on average what would probably be 3-4 cups of greens a day if they were chopped up. Sometimes she'll eat it all in one go, sometimes she'll eat a bit and then nibble more later. Occasionally I'll chop up a bit of fruit (very little) or some green beans or a bit of squash here and there for her to eat off a plate.
What I really want to do is just introduce some more exotic (to us) elements to her diet since I have access to them.
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