BLUE TONGUE SKINKS

I try to mix up the diet of my bluey as much as I can. I'm about half way thru my last batch so I decided to make a new batch to mix it up a bit...

First I boiled some lean ground turkey.


Next I boiled some lean ground beef.


Then I put the veggies in, shredded carrots, kale, and baby bok choi. I use a slap chop to mix them up into the meat.




I made one batch of turkey and veggies, one batch of beef and veggies, and one batch of both turkey and beef and veggies (this one is chopped less fine)


Finally, I put some Ca + D3 and let Apollo have at it!





Just an FYI, the last batch of food I made was lean ground chicken and chicken livers, bell peppers, and endives. I feed Apollo once per week, but I try to give him a small snack of fruit between meals. He isn't a huge fan of fruit though so he usually licks it a few times and then forgets about it-- so sometimes I throw in a few canned snails. Recently, I've been giving Apollo f/t fuzzies as his snack but I know these are supposed to be rare treats so I won't be doing that again for a while.

Hope you enjoyed the pics. I would appreciate any suggestions or ideas for his next batch of food!

I love this idea! How long does it keep?

It would only stay fresh for about a week or 2, so I have to freeze it. Rumor has it blue tongues eat carrion in the wild, so technically I think I could get at least a month out of it in the fridge and it'd be just fine, but I freeze it just in case.

I always make it on feeding day though, so he gets a fresh meal every batch I make.

It's been hard to keep a good variety since I only have 1 small bluey mouth to feed. By the time I get all the ingredients and make it, I have enough for 2 or 3 months worth of food. Hopefully I'll be adding another skink soon, which all mean I go through the food twice as fast and will be able to use new ingredients more often.

Oh! BTW, I've tried doing wellness cat food and mixing some veggies in and he was not interested. I plan on trying dog food eventually, just haven't gotten around to it yet.

looks food,looks like a happy customer as well

That's awesome! When I get mine, I'll try this sort of thing out! I love his om nom nom face

A method I use is to freeze the meat in meal size portions and then add the vegetable and any fruit fresh at the time of serving. Freezing green leafy vegetables loses the thiamine on defrosting and tends to make the greens soft, slimy and generally unappetising.

El Lobo wrote:A method I use is to freeze the meat in meal size portions and then add the vegetable and any fruit fresh at the time of serving. Freezing green leafy vegetables loses the thiamine on defrosting and tends to make the greens soft, slimy and generally unappetising.

I've done that before, because you're right-- the veggies never come out right when i defrost them

The problem is that when I don't freeze the veggies, they go bad and I waste 90% of them. Unfortunately, the veggies I like to eat are ones that aren't the best for a skink and he can't eat a whole package (or even close to it) before it starts to rot.

What I should do is go to a different supermarket, one that doesn't pre package the veggies and buy just enough for that week. I don't know why I didn't think of that earlier? I can avoid the waste and provide fresh veggies if I do that. Thanks for the suggestion El Lobo!

Looks pretty good! I hope you dont mind, but this thread got me thinking about how balanced this diet maybe in regards to the calcium:phosphorus ratio. So Im going to reference this to my post in the Advanced Discussion thread and talk more indepth regarding "homemade" diets. Since you are the most recent to post what you are using, I am going to use yours for my example.

ReptileKing wrote:Looks pretty good! I hope you dont mind, but this thread got me thinking about how balanced this diet maybe in regards to the calcium:phosphorus ratio. So Im going to reference this to my post in the Advanced Discussion thread and talk more indepth regarding "homemade" diets. Since you are the most recent to post what you are using, I am going to use yours for my example.

Thats fine by me I'm open to any suggestions that might keep my skink healthy. Keep in mind I use Calcium + D3 supplement though...

hot carl wrote:

ReptileKing wrote:Looks pretty good! I hope you dont mind, but this thread got me thinking about how balanced this diet maybe in regards to the calcium:phosphorus ratio. So Im going to reference this to my post in the Advanced Discussion thread and talk more indepth regarding "homemade" diets. Since you are the most recent to post what you are using, I am going to use yours for my example.

Thats fine by me I'm open to any suggestions that might keep my skink healthy. Keep in mind I use Calcium + D3 supplement though...

Absolutely. Basically what I am trying to figure out is how much Calcium powder would it take to get the correct/recommended C:P ratio.

[/quote] Absolutely. Basically what I am trying to figure out is how much Calcium powder would it take to get the correct/recommended C:P ratio.[/quote]

Awesome, that'd be good to know!

hot carl wrote:The problem is that when I don't freeze the veggies, they go bad and I waste 90% of them. Unfortunately, the veggies I like to eat are ones that aren't the best for a skink and he can't eat a whole package (or even close to it) before it starts to rot.

I have the same problem. I've considered growing up a little mini dandelion garden to get fresh greens from and seeing if that helps out.