# Feeding/supplement schedule



## Toby Wan Kinoby (Jun 12, 2017)

Hey everyone. Waiting on my baby tegu to hatch and just have a couple things double check. Firstly, I'm wondering what the best brands of supplements are. Ive also heard of using calcium with d3 or without. I plan to give calcium everyday, and some sort of vitamin twice a week. Does this sound correct? 

Now on to feeding. I'm hoping to use ground turkey as the staple of his diet, but I'm aware he'll need more. What else should I feed (crickets, mealworms, fruit+veggies) and how often? 

Thanks for any feedback! I'm looking forward to getting my little guy home and I want to make sure I'm doing everything right!


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## dpjm (Jun 13, 2017)

Zoo Med calcium is good, it's not made from oyster shells.

Though it is constantly touted as great tegu food, ground turkey is unfortunately not a good staple, or is any ground meat for that matter. Meat is just fat and protein, virtually devoid of minerals and other nutrients. If you want to use a similar type of product, you can purchase ground whole animal which has bones and organs included in the ground meat. This is a much better staple. It's available from https://hare-today.com/
Of course, whole animal prey is a bit better than this but the ground whole animal gives you the option of sneaking other foods in, like fruits or vegetables that they may not accept voluntarily. Variety is key as with most diets.

How much calcium to supplement really depends on the type of food you are feeding. It is not a simple matter of every day or every other day. If you were feeding whole animal prey, you would have to use none at all. If you are using ground meat, you need a lot. Find out the calcium and phosphorus amounts in the food items you are using. The calcium should be 1.5 to 2 times the phosphorus amount. Most of the foods besides whole animal prey you will find to be high in phosphorus and low in calcium and need calcium added as a supplement. Insects are really low in calcium and really high in phosphorus so you need to coat them pretty heavily with calcium supplement. Most fruits and vegetables are also higher in phosphorus than calcium with the exception of rich leafy greens (i.e., not lettuce). http://nutritiondata.self.com/ is a decent resource for these calculations.

Multivitamin/mineral twice a week is ok, but a better strategy is to give a bit every day, just in smaller amounts. There is really no way to calculate how much they should have, as the different brands have different formulations and each animal has its individual needs. Multivitamin/mineral supplementation is really guesswork, unfortunately. Just don't overdo it.

Crickets and dubia roaches are both good insect feeders. Insects are high in protein and are good for younger animals, but they will eventually grow out of them You might get a year or two of your tegu eating insects. Live insects are also really good for enrichment as they are likely the only food they will ever have to chase, so it's good to take advantage of them while you can. Remember that they are low in calcium and high in phosphorus so supplement them with calcium generously every time. This is why I don't really like superworms, the supplement doesn't stick to them and you end up with a calcium-deficient food item. They are ok in moderation without supplement if you can pair them with something that is higher in calcium.


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## Toby Wan Kinoby (Jun 13, 2017)

Thank you for your response dpjm! I was under the impression ground turkey was a good staple for them so thank you for informing me otherwise. As for whole prey, do you mean feeder mice/rats plus ground whole prey from haretoday, or just ground whole prey? With whole prey as a staple how many days a week would you suggest feeding crickets or dubia roaches? Lastly, what brand would you suggest for a multivitamin? Thanks!


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## dpjm (Jun 16, 2017)

*Whole prey* means the entire animal, like a mouse or a chick. *Whole ground prey*, which is a bit of a misnomer as it is not entirely whole but pretty close, is ground meat, bones, and some organs like from haretoday. I usually rate whole prey a bit higher in nutritional value than whole ground prey due to the entire animal being included and because they aren't processed. But I would use both. The really nice thing about the whole ground prey is that you can mix in other items like vegetables that the tegu would not otherwise eat. When I was raising my tegu over ten years ago I used ground turkey for this but only because the whole ground prey wasn't really a thing yet.

In the early stage of your tegu's life, insects can be a staple too, and I'd probably suggest alternating among the three options as a regular feeding schedule.

With insects, it is important to gutload them. It's important to understand and appreciate that what you feed your insects also goes into your tegu and can make an healthy impact. A strategy to use when choosing what to feed you insects is to use food that corrects nutritional deficiencies that are inherent in the insects. For example, most insects as I mentioned before are deficient in calcium in relation to a proper tegu diet. So you can fill the insects' intestinal tracts with calcium-rich food prior to feeding them out. The tegu will get the crickets plus whatever is in their guts from their last few meals. This may sound minor but it's not, I've read that you can bring crickets to a 2:1 calcium phosphorus ratio by feeding them a diet that is 12% calcium on a dry matter basis for 48 hours prior to feeding them out. I was surprised that it was so significant when I first read that. They must have voluminous guts! I use a food chopper to make my gutload to get the pieces really small. I like to use chopped kale to which I mix 2g of calcium supplement for every 50g of kale. Kale is high in calcium but nutrient-rich in many other areas, too. Dandelion greens would work equally well.

So, if you purchase your insects from a pet store or breeder, be assured that they have been fed absolute garbage. You should not feed them to your tegu until you have had them at your house on a gutload diet for about 48-72 hours.

I don't really have a strong recommendation for a multivitamin. I've been using the Zoo Med Reptivite with no D3 lately. Reptivite's formulation is heavy on calcium. If you gutload your insects properly you can probably get away with dusting them with Reptivite without an additional calcium supplement.

Hope this helps


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## Toby Wan Kinoby (Jun 26, 2017)

Thanks so much for taking time to reply, I really appreciate it! You've been a big help. I'm still waiting on my tegu to hatch and be ready to come home, can't wait! I've purchased zoomed repti-cal and repti-vite, both without d3. For the time being I'm planning to feed mice, whole ground rabbit from hare-today with veggies and fruit mixed in, and crickets gut loaded. Does that sound like an ideal hatchling diet? I'm also curious what ratio I should be using of the three food types. A third each? 50 percent crickets and 25/25 of mice and ground rabbit? Or any other combination of the three? Thanks again for all your help. I'm blown away by the amount of feedback you've given.


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## dpjm (Jun 28, 2017)

Sounds like a good hatchling diet to me. I'd just rotate among the three types, a third each is probably a good place to start. You'll have to see what your tegu likes, some can be picky.


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## Toby Wan Kinoby (Jun 28, 2017)

Great! Thanks again for replying!


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## dpjm (Jun 29, 2017)

If you have any other questions about diet, enclosure, UV and heat lamp setup, etc., just ask. We're happy to help.


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