Is it O.K. to feed Shinglebacks organic whole wheat bread?

[Celeste]

This morning when my son and I were having toast for breakfast, the young brown female shingleback (whose cage is right next to the table) started getting very excited, flicking her tongue a lot. So I figured, what the heck -- give it a try. I offerred her a tiny chunk of organic whole wheat bread, and she wolfed it down.

So the question is: is that O.K. to feed them (either regularly, or as an occasional treat)? This is whole wheat, so it is very coarse, and probably contains a lot of pieces of wheat grains.

Had to ask here, as I haven't found mention of grain products in any feeding guidelines for shinglebacks... Can they digest it? Are they likely to get impacted or anything?

-- Celeste

[Fatal_S]

Personally, I'd say high fiber products like grains or bananas should be an occasional small snack. If you give your BTS lots of bananas, they get plugged up. I'd imagine the same would go for wheat. However, I'm no expert on grain, that's for sure (XP eww, bread)

[SailleSkinklover]

Hey Celeste, have you named any of your beauties yet?
I would venture to agree with Fatal, whole grains are probably OK as an occasional treat, but I don't know for sure. Hopefully some of the Aussie Shinglsback owners will pipe up soon?

[jasjmm27]

Most people have dogs under the table begging for food but Celeste has Shingles doing that! That's pretty cool, wish I could have seen that! I would guess that the ingredients in most processed human food wouldn't be so great for blueys...just my thoughts on that. Not sure how grain, or the other ingredients in bread, would effect blueys...

It doesn't seem that Blueys are "seed eaters" from all that I have seen...at least not nearly as much as Uros...

[shingleback aus]

im not sure id just keep it as a rarely feed food in portion .

[Scotts1au]

In the wild they are probably gunna eat anything they can get the choppers onto and in reality people are likely feeding processed wheat and other simple sugar products all the time to their blueys through dog food and other souces without realising it.

Starch is easily converted to sugars and presumably reptiles produce amalayse enzymes in a similar manner to to mammals. In this case they should be able to process simple sugar easy enough - the problem could be with a diet with a lot of simple sugars a regulatory one, where mammals burn this stuff off quickly, rapid hits of sugars could cause symptoms similar to hyperglycemia (too much sugar in the blood) and may lead to complications with the eyes, and other organs. So presumably exposure to elevated blood sugar levels is going to be longer.

Feeding mammals exclusively with processed bread leads to malnutrition due to the low protein and vitamin content, mania and death often in a few weeks - faster than death by starving cos of acceleration of the metabolism ie, in mice.

In summary probably inconsequential in small amounts. If I've made any leaps here with regards to reptiles someone correct me

Scott

[SailleSkinklover]

Celeste, do you have a copy of the Bluey Bible? I checked it out and it has details of the feeding regime for T. Rugosa. They do mention wheat bran and oat flakes as used in the diet, as well as polished cooked rice. Runner beans, dandelion, kiwi (which my Merauke loves) and egg shells are quoted as having produced excellent results in the keeping of T.Rugosa.
Hope this helps, and I personally think having fed organic is definitely better than if you had fed her say Wonderbread or some other bleached processed Yuk-stuff.
I Think an occassional treat of good organic not-heavily-processed bread should be just fine.

[Celeste]

Great! If they like the bread and it won't hurt them, maybe I can sprinkle a little bit of it toasted and crumbled on top of their greens (like croutons) to encourage them to eat their greens!

-- Celeste

[Lea]

Not sure about bread and all the salt and additives in it, but grains seem to be ok. The wild ones in SA eat small fruits and nut-type things off the most unpalatable bushes! My captive shinglebacks have eaten the chicken's grain off the grass and absolutely love it ... particularly when it has started to shoot green sprouts! I think grains with soft and easily digestable husks, should be alright as an occasional treat. Alfalfa sprouts, snow pea shoots and mung beans are all rich in calcium and have soft husks to the seed pods and the skinks seem to enjoy them.

[Celeste]

Not sure about bread and all the salt and additives in it, but grains seem to be ok. The wild ones in SA eat small fruits and nut-type things off the most unpalatable bushes! My captive shinglebacks have eaten the chicken's grain off the grass and absolutely love it ... particularly when it has started to shoot green sprouts! I think grains with soft and easily digestable husks, should be alright as an occasional treat. Alfalfa sprouts, snow pea shoots and mung beans are all rich in calcium and have soft husks to the seed pods and the skinks seem to enjoy them.

Lea,

thank you so much for the information!

This bread is organic, and doesn't have any additives, but it does have a little salt -- which brings up another question: does anyone know anything about their salt requirements? Do they have sources of salt in the wild?

The sprouts are a great idea! I'll try those too!

What kind of nut-type things do they eat? Are they nuts or seeds? Do you think it would be o.k. to offer them pecans or other tree nuts (or seeds like bird seed)? I have a chicken, so I have chicken scratch and lay crumbles -- should I try offering the shingles some of the chicken's lay crumbles, too? How about cactus fruits? (They have lots of large seeds, so I was worried about possible impaction). Do the small fruits they eat in the wild contain seeds? Are the seeds large and/or numerous?

In the absence of any knowledgeable input on these, I might just try offering them some or all of these items in small quantities.

-- C

[Lea]

Not sure about bread and all the salt and additives in it, but grains seem to be ok. The wild ones in SA eat small fruits and nut-type things off the most unpalatable bushes! My captive shinglebacks have eaten the chicken's grain off the grass and absolutely love it ... particularly when it has started to shoot green sprouts! I think grains with soft and easily digestable husks, should be alright as an occasional treat. Alfalfa sprouts, snow pea shoots and mung beans are all rich in calcium and have soft husks to the seed pods and the skinks seem to enjoy them.

Lea,

thank you so much for the information!

This bread is organic, and doesn't have any additives, but it does have a little salt -- which brings up another question: does anyone know anything about their salt requirements? Do they have sources of salt in the wild?

The sprouts are a great idea! I'll try those too!

What kind of nut-type things do they eat? Are they nuts or seeds? Do you think it would be o.k. to offer them pecans or other tree nuts (or seeds like bird seed)? I have a chicken, so I have chicken scratch and lay crumbles -- should I try offering the shingles some of the chicken's lay crumbles, too? How about cactus fruits? (They have lots of large seeds, so I was worried about possible impaction). Do the small fruits they eat in the wild contain seeds? Are the seeds large and/or numerous?

In the absence of any knowledgeable input on these, I might just try offering them some or all of these items in small quantities.

-- C

Hmmm ... I was thinking along the lines of desert fruits such as bush tomatoes, desert raisins and quandongs ... all of these are fairly succulent and have good nutrition for a desert animal. They also eat whole flowers, such as the Salvation Jane, which are toxic to most animals! These have fairly small seeds ... I don't know the long term effect of such plants and seeds on the organs of the skinks, but their ability to withstand thousands of years of time, relatively unchanged in evolution, seems to suggest that they are pretty safe.

With regards to the salt issue, I would say that their requirements would be extremely low. Salt increases body's need for water, promoting thirst and a need to drink, something a desert dwelling animal doesn't need. Their need for water in the wild is minimal and opportunistic, not to say they cannot suffer dehydration, especially in such harsh and dry places like the arid deserts of Australia. Shinglebacks in particular, concentrate their urine as much as they can, so they excrete as little water as possible when they pee. Increasing the salt in their diet would probably upset the natural process of elimination.

I hope that helps a little.

[Geoff Gates]

Celeste,

Stumpies absolutely adore the berries off the Australian native plant Enchylaena tomentosa (Ruby Salt bush).

As for your organic bread is there any milk in it?

[DeadEye]

Hi 1 time wont hurt ... I think yall know mine sick or healthy eat alot of chinese food ..pork , peas , corn .. they will eat the rice . sunflower seeds . never seen a problem eating any thing . yes .. Iam sure ya Skink will be fine .Mine eat raptor meat with chick starter love it ... horse n roo Meat full of vitimins

to ... cheers rock melons 4 a day @ the mo .. whats cheap
or free lolol they will eat raw human ... i took me finger near off ... N nows lick the wound hahahahah eat anything .. Some in the garden .. i spot em legs missing fat as pigs cheers
if they eat it they know its cool ... dog poo i seen them eat white not sloppy LMAOO

[Celeste]

Hey Celeste, have you named any of your beauties yet?

Sigh... the short answer is "not yet"; the longer answer is I am trying to find something from Australian Aboriginal languages or mythology that sounds good and "fits".

I started researching Aborigine languages, but there are so *many*! And there is so little info about them available online. So then I started researching Australian Aboriginal mythologies, but haven't had a lot of time to follow up on that yet either. Still working on it.

Most of my Corucia have names derived from Indian mythology (with a few from Greek, Roman, and Egyptian mythologies thrown in for good measure). Not that Corucia are from India or anything -- I just liked the sound of the names and got on a kick and stuck with it.

-- Celeste

[Celeste]

As for your organic bread is there any milk in it?

No -- it has whole wheat flour, water, canola oil, wheat gluten, sea salt, yeast, "cultured wheat flour", and "enzymes". The weird thing is, I'm looking at the ingredients, and it doesn't appear to contain anything the yeast could eat (like sugar or honey). I used to bake bread a lot, and you always had to have some form of sugar in there for the yeasties to eat. Odd.

-- C

[Celeste]

Hi 1 time wont hurt ... I think yall know mine sick or healthy eat alot of chinese food ..pork , peas , corn .. they will eat the rice . sunflower seeds . never seen a problem eating any thing . yes .. Iam sure ya Skink will be fine .Mine eat raptor meat with chick starter love it ... horse n roo Meat full of vitimins

to ... cheers rock melons 4 a day @ the mo .. whats cheap
or free lolol they will eat raw human ... i took me finger near off ... N nows lick the wound hahahahah eat anything .. Some in the garden .. i spot em legs missing fat as pigs :P cheers
if they eat it they know its cool ... dog poo i seen them eat white not sloppy LMAOO :doh:

Oookay... well, it sounds like it would be hard to feed them anything that would actually harm them. So I guess that's reassuring! :->

Yes, my young brown female almost took off the tip of my right index finger yesterday, but it was my own fault, as I was offering her a squirming cricket with my bare fingers. (She just really wanted that cricket, and got a little "over-enthusiastic"). That'll teach me!

-- C