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Timmyd HerpsinIN Danielle11 Felmarg LaurenL HerpsinIN Felmarg Timmyd Coolguy132435 Johelian JackAsp Johelian Yavie JackAsp JackAsp Johelian |
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Timmyd View Profile |
Dog food for lizards????
but, what i dont understand is why do people tell other its good, ive seen people saying that its a good staple.....this is wrong, dog food is made for a dog, and no lizard should really eat it. canned dog food, or any canned food is really not good to give them, why.....2 words.....chemical preservatives, or just preservatives all together lizards are by all means, are not domesticated, and should be fed fresh food dog food contains many synthetic preservatives, such as butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA), butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT), and ethoxyquin. these are not so bad for dogs, and we know this because they have been tested, like i said dog food is made for dogs even natural preservatives can shorten life span and create problems now if you give them dog/cat food as a treat i dont think this will be a problem, but use it as just a treat, its best not to give it to them at all. now i know plenty of people who do feed them dog food and they say its fine, but when you think about buying fresh meat is going to be a better choice |
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| 03/18/08 01:41pm |
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HerpsinIN View Profile |
Message To: Timmyd In reference to Message Id: 1665776 Dog food for lizards????
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| 03/19/08 01:18am |
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Danielle11 View Profile |
Message To: HerpsinIN In reference to Message Id: 1666923 Dog food for lizards????
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| 03/19/08 11:02am |
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Felmarg View Profile |
Message To: Danielle11 In reference to Message Id: 1667145 Dog food for lizards????
If you are talking about dry dog food, I probably would not feed that. |
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| 03/19/08 04:17pm |
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LaurenL View Profile |
Message To: Felmarg In reference to Message Id: 1667486 Dog food for lizards????
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| 03/19/08 04:40pm |
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HerpsinIN View Profile |
Message To: LaurenL In reference to Message Id: 1667523 Dog food for lizards????
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| 03/19/08 10:26pm |
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Felmarg View Profile |
Message To: HerpsinIN In reference to Message Id: 1668130 Dog food for lizards????
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| 03/21/08 10:52am |
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Timmyd View Profile |
Message To: Felmarg In reference to Message Id: 1669724 Dog food for lizards????
large breeders use dog food because of just that.....THEY ARE LARGE BREEDERS....they have so many to feed that dog food is a cheap way to fattin them up, not because its good for them, breeders are in it for the money, look at guys in the ball python world, kevin Mc Curly, Ralph davis, greg grazoni....money you can go to ralph davis you tube and he even said, "im here to sell snakes and make money" (i have alot of respect for all the people i stated above....sorry if this sounded like a low blow) i just got a new BTS, and the guy said he will eat any thing....lies....he had this little guy on dog food, and now i have to spend time weining him off of it. dog food has alot of fat in it too, it can help to cause FLD in your animal, rember BTS are true omnivores, 60% plant matter and 40% animal matter |
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| 03/21/08 11:37am |
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Coolguy132435 View Profile |
Message To: Timmyd In reference to Message Id: 1669764 Dog food for lizards????
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| 04/11/08 05:33pm |
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Johelian View Profile |
Message To: Coolguy132435 In reference to Message Id: 1699257 Dog food for lizards????
What I would say is this: cheap brands of catfood/dogfood are very poor diets for reptiles. Theyre usually made of animal derivatives (not even real chunks of cooked meat, just reconstituted bits that couldnt be sold off as human grade), packed with colourings and additives, and fortified for mammals. Thats all of your normal commercial "big name" brands and supermarket brands. I wouldnt feed these to any reptile. However, you can buy totally natural brands of catfood with no additives; here in the UK Im going with Almo Nature, which contains nothing but natural ingredients. A typical composition of a tin is: chicken breast 75%, cooking water 24%, rice 1%. They also do a chicken and pumpkin mix, but alas I have run out of that and cant type out the ingredients lol. The key difference in these is, when you open them, the food actually LOOKS like whats in it - you can easily see this is chicken shredded up with bits of pumpkin. Compare this to a "normal" brand which is composed of brown chunks and jelly no matter what its supposed to contain, and you get the idea. Natural branded catfood also doesnt SMELL hideous like catfood. |
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| 04/12/08 10:13am |
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JackAsp View Profile |
Message To: Johelian In reference to Message Id: 1700092 Dog food for lizards????
Cats and dogs are Atkins creatures. They are built to live on fats and proteins. They have a higher body temperature than we do, and need an enormous caloric intake in relation to their body mass. We ourselves burn fat much more rapidly than skinks do, and would face a sharp increase in organ disease if we tried to live on cat or dog food. Not all bad foods cause their damge immediately. Some like to wait until middle age kicks in, and then see what they can do to keep it from lasting long enough to become OLD age. The breeders who are committed to using processed mammalian foods aren’t shelling out big money to have biopsies done on all the animals that die. They make a guess on what killed it, and unless it was killed by a can of 9 Lives falling off the shelf and conking it on the head they don’t blame their dietary choice, because they’ve already decided that it’s blameless. Or, they don’t even keep it once fertility drops, so if it dies on somebody a year or two later: "Hey, it was fine when I had it!" I have a skink who was raised for two years on canned cat food, and still a year later seems healthy. Hopefully I got her onto a more natural diet in time, otherwise she’s probably not going to live as long as she would have. I continued to use cat food for a while, just a tiny bit in the dish with live foods to get a strong intitial feeding response, but after a few months I stopped with it. I might offer it to her again if I ever need to sneak her some medicine or something like that, but as normal diet, why bother? Even if you don’t raise your own feeder bugs, is it really that hard to keep a few nightcrawlers in the refrigerator for when there’s no crickets handy? Nobody uses the stuff because they truly think it is the best thig you can possibly feed them. They do it because it’s easy. For omnivores, any child can explain why a cat or dog’s food is not ideal for a fruit eater. And for carnivores: if you wouldn’t feed your lizard rice, corn, and lard if you had to mix them together yourself, why do they suddenly become a good choice just because somebody else tossed them into a can for you? |
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| 04/13/08 01:22am |
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Johelian View Profile |
Message To: JackAsp In reference to Message Id: 1701001 Dog food for lizards????
Im quite insulted that you feel justified in commenting on the effort I make on my animals behalf based on your total misinterpretation of my post. Come and watch me cooking food for my herps, or spending a fortune in time and money chopping monkey tail greens and I think you might be pleasantly surprised. |
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| 04/13/08 04:00am |
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Yavie View Profile |
Message To: Timmyd In reference to Message Id: 1665776 Dog food for lizards????
Then there’s the fruits and veggies, also o/n. But, my girls also get canned o/n cat food as a treat once a week. Like another poster, I use the Spots stuff. No chemicals or preservatives in it. Before I got the girls, they lived for 5 years on dog food, and it was probably the cheap cr*p. In doing some research, I’ve found that cat food is better for herps than dog food is because it has more protein and fiber and less fat in it. Of course if you’ve got a sickly, skinny herp then kitten food would be a decent choice. Cat food IS easier, but is not cheaper if you buy good stuff - not compared with buying a mess of chicken breasts and cooking them yourself. Some people don’t have the time for that, or really know how to cook it - you’ve got to admit that there really aren’t all that many good care sheets for skinks out there, nevermind a recipe for how to cook chicken for your skink. In any case, the reason I’m responding to your post is to point out that you really shouldn’t make sweeping generalisations like this. (: You’re talking about the cheapest of the cheap and most people don’t use that stuff. - Yav |
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| 04/13/08 01:52pm |
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JackAsp View Profile |
Message To: Yavie In reference to Message Id: 1701508 Dog food for lizards????
Quote: Many of the largest Blue tongue skink breeders in the United States feeds canned dog food exclusively to their blue tongues, breeding adults and the babies. Many have been breeding for 10yrs plus and never a problem.
That was what my starting post seemed like it was pretty clearly phrased as a response to, if you read the first few sentences. I tend to just read to the bottom and hit ’reply," so it ends up looking like I’m specifically responding to the last person above me. I was joining the conversation later than you. but not particularly because of you. However, as long as I’m here, anything that’s a sufficiently good cat food for cats is pretty much by definition not the best protein source for reptiles. It’s not even the best protein source for dogs. Or cats of a slightly different age bracket. May I ask precisely which nutrient is better provided by cat food than by leaner sources? I’d think that a home-made all-natural mix that was actually specifically tailored to the needs of lizards would be such a poor cat food that it would actually be considered skink food... which would sort of eliminate the whole argument.... |
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| 04/14/08 03:58am |
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JackAsp View Profile |
Message To: JackAsp In reference to Message Id: 1702485 Dog food for lizards????
Johelian, your need to use cat food for monkeytails to come up with a paltable mixture that they will take, I understand. Like I said, I used cat food as long as I had to in order to get a healthy feeding pattern established with my own girl. The only real difference of opinion I see betwen us is your assertion that most people don’t use the really blatantly inappropriate brands. Most people neither know nor care which brand is even best for their cat, and when they get a lizard they feed it whatever they’ve got around anyway. (Obviously, those who are cheap or lazy enough to want to use it as the entire diet are going to be even less finicky, and that’s all too common as well.) Even I, after all that ranting, still buy low-fat dry chow and use it as roach food, so I can’t completely claim that even my own skink absloutely never eats any. I tried buying regular roach food at a reptile show a couple of months ago, but one of the pieces wasn’t quite as well ground up as the guy who sold it to me thought. Main ingrediant turned out to be Friskies cat food! Maybe I should try one of the cricket loads. |
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| 04/14/08 04:18am |
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Johelian View Profile |
Message To: JackAsp In reference to Message Id: 1702490 Dog food for lizards????
Just to clarify, I dont use catfood for monkey tails (strict herbivores) - but do for blues. My blues do however get a portion of the monkey tail diet in their feeds, as it contains many different leaves and veg. On top of that they get diet-specific items like inverts, egg etc. Im not the one that said that most people dont use inappropriate brands either - I think that was Yavie. I believe that most people probably DO use the cheapest, most easily commercially available brands, which is why I mentioned that the larger brands should be avoided. :) Certainly, I know quite a few people feed their herps (not just blue tongues) catfood, and its seen as an "easy-way out". I wouldnt say Im of this mindset as I have purposefully hunted around many stores for the most natural type, and its fed as a small portion of the total diet; however, if you disagree with me on that point then thats fair enough. I do feed them as many different things as possible. So, for the record, Im not a fan of using catfood as a sole diet for any herp; I think that, for the majority of the time, its a reason for someone not to bother trying to feed their animals properly. However, for a small part of the overall diet to encourage them to eat other foods, I must admit that I do use it - however, I have ensured to purchase a natural, low fat kind. The best kind of evil, I suppose. If I wasnt using this, I would just be cooking and shredding the chicken myself, and it would have pretty much the same composition as the can. |
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| 04/14/08 07:55am |
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