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Feeding/Diet

Jack Curry

New Member
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14
I recently got my first Tegu (yay)! He is around 2 ft, and I don't know how old he is because he is adopted straight from the Everglades. Anyways, I have him in a ground meat diet. I usually give him 2 big meals a week consisting of ground turkey, banana, calcium powder, and and egg with the shells. Is this good for his size? He seems to be doing just fine. He recently came out of hibernation and is eating like a pig now. Seems like it's only about a week before he sheds again. Any advice for me (a new tegu owner) would be greatly appreciated.
 

Walter1

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5 Year Member
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I recently got my first Tegu (yay)! He is around 2 ft, and I don't know how old he is because he is adopted straight from the Everglades. Anyways, I have him in a ground meat diet. I usually give him 2 big meals a week consisting of ground turkey, banana, calcium powder, and and egg with the shells. Is this good for his size? He seems to be doing just fine. He recently came out of hibernation and is eating like a pig now. Seems like it's only about a week before he sheds again. Any advice for me (a new tegu owner) would be greatly appreciated.
That's excellent!!! Probably aproaching a year old.

Skip the egg shells but VERY generously dust his food with Calcium powder everytime.
 

dpjm

Active Member
5 Year Member
Messages
378
An omnivorous lizard needs around 1.0 - 1.5 % calcium in it's diet on a dry matter basis. If you were feeding 100 g of ground turkey, that is 28 g of dry matter. Multiply that by 0.0125 and you get 0.35 g, which is the amount of calcium that you need to add. of course, you would subtract the amount of calcium that is already in the turkey, but in this case it is almost negligible (0.013 g). The calcium supplement is calcium carbonate, not pure calcium, it is actually 40% calcium. So you need to multiply the 0.35 by 2.5 to get the amount of calcium carbonate to add, which is 0.88 g. So you need to add 0.88 g of calcium carbonate for every 100 g of fresh ground turkey. That will make the ground turkey calcium neutral.

It is not a bad idea to use a small scale to weigh out the food you are using so you can supplement with the right amount of calcium. You can buy a small digital scale that weighs in increments of 0.01 g.
 

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