Food Agressive

[Guest]

My 6 month old (supposedly female) Argentine Black and White Tegu Isabella is extremely food agressive.
I got her a few weeks ago from a guy who really didnt take care of her at all. Shes skinny, she has some crinks in her tail and her face is shortened due to lack of calcium, shes missing toenails, and possibly a few tips of her toes, and i think she might be missing part of her tail but its hard to tell. anyways, ill get to the point.. The person I got her from fed her inside her enclosure im sure, because she wouldent be acting the way she does if he hadnt. Every time i even take the screen top off she immediatly runs out of her hide, or out of the mulch, and tries climbing up the glass to get to my hands at the top of the cage.. i then slowly stick my hand in and she completely lunges at it. she bites whatever she can get her teeth sunk into, and will absolutely not let go. she shakes her head and thrashes around like crazy. My main problem is getting her out of her cage. I need some advice on how to go about stopping her food agression, and letting me get her out of her enclosure without tearing me up. I am getting a pair of nice gloves in a few days, so hopefully those will help, but im still going to need some advice on this, thanks a bunch.

 

[rrcoolj]

Well first obviously you need to not associate food with the enclosure at all and yes I reccomend gloves. Just let het know you are not a food source. Slowly put your hand in the enclosure and simply lay it on the substrate. Let her do her thing. Once she calmes down try to lift her up from her belly. Don't grab her and transfer her to a feeding ben with food already in it. Hopefully this helps but im sure others will add to it. It will take patience but I think she will come around.

 

[txrepgirl]

Since she is so fisty what I would do put on a sweat shirt and pull up your arm and hand so the sleeve is hanging over your hand ( hand in a fist ).When you open the enclosure let the sleeve hand in the enclosure.Isabella will bite the sleeve and you don't get hurt like this.Than take your other hand and put it on her back and gently grap her.Than take her out off the enclosure and put her in the feeding bin.I wanted to make a video for you but one off my babies is hibernating and the other one ( that I just got two days ago ) didn't come out yet.As soon as Shakespeare come out I'll make a video for you.