I just got my Ruby home from the vet. He wants me to put him on a lower protein diet due to some of his health issues. The problem is everything i can feed him other than vegi's; which he isnt overly interested in yet as he is just 1 year, has high protein. What do i do?

If you don't mind me asking , why did the vet tell you that your Tegu has to be on a low diet ? Do you ever feed your Tegu frozen/thawed rodents ? How often do you feed your Tegu the rodents and the raw meats, eggs ?

He has a problem right now processing properly. Yes I have all the proper lighting and he is in a large enough terrarium. For some reasonj when he came out of hyber. he wasnt processing his calcium properly and his urates crystalized inside of him~this was his first surgery. Then he was on med's for fatty liver disease; which is better, but then he wouldn't poop~back to the vet. Didi nd enima~then he wouldn't eat thus he wasn't pooping yet~back to the vet. I just picked him up today and this was what he told me. He said crickets, locusts, roaches~her's the confusion, once I gut load they are high in protein; which is what he told me to avoid. Other than this fruit's&vegi's or scrammbled eggs, but he's not really interested in the F & V yet. He also mentioned an adult mouse, but everything i have read says nothing bigger than their head and an adult is~plus the protein. I have been feeding him raw chicken or turkey i would have assumed this has less protien then what he wants me to feed.

Rat pups are pretty low in protine compared to chicken (remember a chicken breast is just pure muscle tissue hence pure protine). In other words stay away from ground meat and you'll have to postbone gut loading, instead just use a dust to make sure he is still getting the vitmines and minerals he needs (by the way what gut load are you using that incrases protine?). Also alot of young tegus will not take fruits and veggies but for some reason love baby food get a veggie and fruite mix baby food (try and stay away from bananna just becuase of the high about of patasium in it). The low protine diet is to help with the kidney funtion and the fatty liver issues from the sounds of it. I'll have to take a look but Oxbow does make a recovery diet for carnavoirs but im not sure what the protine % is on that.

Just curious, how did the vet diagnose the fatty liver? Did he use ultrasound or biopsy? When he/she told you that his urates crystalized did he use the word gout? The more detail you provide the better advice I can try to give you. The teaching hospital I am doing my clinical rotations at right now has some of the top exotic veterinarians in the country, the more info the better picture I can paint for them and myself to try to see what kind of help I can provide.