How many mice/rats/chicks do you feed per meal?

[Rhetoric]

Each of my tegus eat 3-4 jumbo xl mice (30+g) per meal. I buy each mouse for $0.42 when I buy over 100. I don't think I'm feeding too many. All of the tegus poop the day after eating (big poops), they're passing everything. Not over weight. I'm curious to see how much everyone else feeds their tegus and what size their tegus are.

I've recently started doing more of a while prey diet with some turkey and fish here and there. So far its working out alright.

 

[Dirtydmc]

I left 3 pinky mice in the boys tank this morning. So far no word on if they ate em or not. Still trying to get them to eat one. Still nursing Dozer too. Seems a little better. but he doesnt like the smell or taste of all the added suppliments.

 

[kellen.watkins]

I do whole prey on the weekends only... no particular reason I don't add any supplements to it, they get seafood once a week (either shrimp or tilapia) ground turkey with beef liver twice a week and ground lamb with cod liver twice a week, honestly its a toss up between ground lamb or mice as their favorite, I don't weigh how much they eat but eli can slam down 2 fuzzies and vanilla can slam down 4, eli has grown a bit he's now 7 weeks old and I guesstimate about 15" long not nearly as bulky as vanilla, vanilla is 11 weeks old and is 22" long and is bulky, she escaped somehow and was on top of elis cage so I got to hold her for about an hour and its crazy different cause of how big she has gotten

 

[james.w]

I will do as many as 6 small rats or 6 small chicks or a mixture of the 2.

 

[jdpFL]

I have to say.....(funny story)....we had a live adult mouse left over that one of our BP's didn't eat....so I thought....let's give it to our tegu! Wanted to see how a tegu would eat a rodent in the wild....etc. OMG. Violent. Crazy. Insane. Never imagined that our sweet little Gu was capable of that! We won't do it again, will do F/T, but had to see how it would work. I definitely believe that feeding live would cause aggression or wild behavior. I just can't get over how violent the whole thing was! Neat to see, at any rate. But not humane and wouldn't do it again.

 

[james.w]

I had 1 male and 3 female adult mice that I was trying to breed, but had no luck. I ended up feeding them to my Tegu and it wasn't a whole lot different than how he eats F/T.

 

[jdpFL]

Oh wow....really? Ours went nuts.....slamming out around, shaking it, blood everywhere....lol. With a frozen he just swallows it whole like turkey!

 

[spidersandmonsters]

Haha mine like systematically breaks all the bones, starting at the hips and moving to the skull, and just swallows them whole. She eats two small arctic mice a meal, but she's only three months old and about twenty inches.

 

[Rhetoric]

I've fed guru live mice once. He had 3 little mice back in like December or Jan. It was neat to see, I won't do it again but the curiosity got to me. I had all 3 mice in the tub and put him in there, he killed each mouse before he actually ate them. One fast bite at the base of the mice heads and that was that. I think another member has posted something about tegus killing as many things as they can and then eating to ensure they will get enough to eat before all the prey runs off, it makes sense!

In a non-sicko way, I think its neat to see how they eat things. It's almost like they think about how they're going to do it sometimes lol.

 

[dragonmetalhead]

The most rodents Kodo has ever eaten in one sitting was one large adult mouse and two pinkies. I fed him a cut up small rat once. He has eaten well over 15 silversides in a sitting a number of times and on Tuesday he snarfed at least a half dozen chicken gizzards.

 

[jdpFL]

Yep....I know what you mean about killing everything first, my sav does that. Kills all the crickets, then goes around eating them. It's hilarious because if he sees one wiggle, he will slam it with his snout real quick to make sure it's not going anywhere....lol!