# Adult Colombian tegu food



## Carlyle (Aug 21, 2018)

I picked up a 3 yr old female tegu from a pet show aafew weeks ago and she's been eating regularly, everything has been going well, she's settling into a new enclosure I picked up over the weekend etc etc. Just was looking around and maybe I didn't look hard enough but didn't really see any threads on what to feed adult tegus. I've been leaving mice on a paper plate for her when I leave for work but she won't always eat them so I swap out food every couple days. So far she's eaten hard boiled eggs and mice, I left out some sliced mangos on a plate for her with the center( pit I guess?) Removed to see if she likes those. Any other suggestions? Just am trying out different foods to see what she likes right now. I've seen people talk about ground turkey but I dunno if it needs to be cooked or can be served raw


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## Django (Aug 21, 2018)

I don't have a adult an Tegu but there's a wide variety of things a tegu can eat, a good website that can be of help is this one right here it has a huge list of what you can feed your tegu and what not to feed to much of and whatnot. http://tegusfromaroundtheworld.weebly.com/food-list.html, I feed my little guy a mixture of chicken hearts ground turkey and chicken gizzards with calcium dust and hopefully I can start to get him into fruit so he can have a balanced diet. And for the preparation methods I serve the food raw after being thawed and soaked in warm water for about 30 minutes to get it to room temp. Hope this helps!


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## AlphaAlpha (Aug 24, 2018)

The food list django has linked is great , but if your tegu is anything like my Alpha it won't touch any fruit or veg and will be total carnivor... be great to hear If and what fruit/veg it does try though??


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## Teguixin.22 (Aug 26, 2018)

I tried giving my tegu grapes, she didn't like them.


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## Walter1 (Aug 26, 2018)

Colombians strongly carnivorous?


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## AlphaAlpha (Aug 26, 2018)

Walter1 said:


> Colombians strongly carnivorous?



I've not read anything to back this up Walter but I agree that they probably are as I've tried many things and Alpha is never intrested with any.


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## Teguixin.22 (Aug 30, 2018)

Walter1 said:


> Colombians strongly carnivorous?


Not strongly, but from what i know they eat more animal based food than plant based. The study on adult dietary habits is eluding me right now...


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## Teguixin.22 (Sep 3, 2018)

I found the study finally!
"In summary our analysis indicates that Tupinamibis teguixin is a food generalist and omnivore, that feeds on medium and large-sized arthropods, vertebrates and vegetative parts (stems, leaves, but principally fruits). Principal food items (Petrides, 1975) were fruits, snails, coleopterans, lepidopterans, anura and rodents. Several other food items of very low frequency were also present, suggesting they are occasionally ingested by this opportunistic teiid lizard."
https://www.thebhs.org/publications...eiidae-in-the-eastern-chaco-of-argentina/file


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## Walter1 (Sep 3, 2018)

Teguixin.22 said:


> I found the study finally!
> "In summary our analysis indicates that Tupinamibis teguixin is a food generalist and omnivore, that feeds on medium and large-sized arthropods, vertebrates and vegetative parts (stems, leaves, but principally fruits). Principal food items (Petrides, 1975) were fruits, snails, coleopterans, lepidopterans, anura and rodents. Several other food items of very low frequency were also present, suggesting they are occasionally ingested by this opportunistic teiid lizard."
> https://www.thebhs.org/publications...eiidae-in-the-eastern-chaco-of-argentina/file


Nice find. Useful paper. Thanks.


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## dpjm (Sep 7, 2018)

Good paper, but it is about Argentine black and white tegus. In 1975, when this paper was written, they were also called _Tupinambis teguixin_.


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## Teguixin.22 (Sep 8, 2018)

hm, that didn't even cross my mind. Whoops


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