Tegu meat addict

[Tiamat]

Hello all,

I'm new here. Unless you happen to be profoundly dumb , you realize Tiamat is the name of my tegu, not my name.

I'm a pretty experienced reptile handler. I've had all sorts of snakes, savannah monitors, green iguanas and Florida anoles (although I don't think the last one counts).

I've been wanting a tegu for some time because of their intelligence and the fact that they can bond with humans.

i hit gold the other week and found a breeder that actually had juvenile tegus in stock, so I bought one.

Now my main concern is that I can't get Tiamat to eat fruit. From what I've read, they're natural omnivores and I'd like to keep Tiamat's diet as natural as possible.

At first I thought it may be the habitat causing a lack of appetite, but I read up on red Argentines and think I did a pretty good job setting it up. About my setup:

1. Large tank (75 gallons)
2. Properly heated (80°F for most of the cage an 100° F for the basking area)
3. There are two UVB bulbs (one for each side of the aquarium)
4. three inches of damp coco coir on the bottom that Tiamat likes to burrow in (this is something I cant's stand)
5. A hiding log in the basking area
6. Fresh water
7. Misted daily

I chopped up some bananas into small tegu-sized bits. Tiamat walked over to the food bowl. Tiamat smell sniffed it and then went away. I figured it could be the shock of a new habitat, so I let Tiamat alone in the cage overnight. The next morning, I added tried bananas again as well as honeydew melon. Neither was touched.

Then I gave Tiamat a small piece of raw chicken. He/She gobbled it down right away. I talked to the breeder and they said that the tegu had been eating ground turkey, crickets and the occasional fuzzy mouse or catfood. I've read that tegus can become "addicted" to meat in captivity. Is there any way of breaking this "addiction" and getting my tegu to eat fruits?

 

[dpjm]

Yeah, that's normal when they are young. Fruit and vegetables are something they may develop a taste for later on in life. Do keep trying, it's never too early to introduce them.

Try to ditch the ground turkey in favor of whole prey items like mice, rats, chicks, whole fish, etc. Organ meats like liver and hearts and gizzards are ok, but plain old meat like ground turkey has little to offer but protein and fat. You can also order up some whole ground rabbit/chicken that has meat and organs and bones, that is much better than just meat. I think I've heard good things about this place: https://hare-today.com/category/whole_prey Crickets and dubia roaches are ok to use also but supplement them with lots of calcium.

There are other ways to get them to eat other types of foods besides just waiting until he likes it. If you follow this thread I posted about how I trained my tegu to eat from a spatula, from which he'll eat almost anything I put on there.
http://www.tegutalk.com/threads/any-ways-to-get-veggies-into-the-diet.18082/#post-160502