Blue Tongue Skink / Lizard Diet
Blue tongues are omnivorous, meaning they will eat both plant and animal matter. As they have a wide and varied diet in the wild eating insects, worms, grubs, snails, flowers, and plants, they should have a varied diet as pets. You should not be overly concerned about this as their diet is relatively simple to provide.
Blue Tongued Skinks can also be picky eaters- each one will eat what they like, although they will still each quite a wide variety. If you have two or three or more you will find one will eat something that another will not so be prepared to experiment with you foods.
They will eat nearly any type of plant matter - collard greens, dandelion greens, grapes, apples, broccoli, peas, various berries, banana, peaches, nectarines, and pears during the season. DO NOT feed iceberg lettuce.
Baby foods and good quality dog food are readily accepted but this should not be a large part of their diet and only given occassionally as they are high in salt content. Crickets also taken but veggies should make up a large part (60%) of their diet. Gut load the crickets and mix in vitamins and calcium in the food before feeding but do not go over board once or twice a week is plenty. Thawed pre-killed frozen mice can also be fed to your skink. Chicken pieces are also good as a supplement.
Frozen vegetable mixes should be avoided. These are either mostly corn and carrots, or mostly cauliflower and broccoli. Neither mix is particularly good for skinks and other animals. Corn and carrots convert quickly to sugars, and carrots have oxalates, which bind calcium, preventing its uptake. Cauliflower and broccoli contain goitrogens which bind iodine, leading to impaired thyroid function. In additional, the thiaminase in frozen green vegetables and greens destroys the thiamin (B1) in the plant; when fed regularly, this leads to a thiamin deficiency.
It is often a good idea to make up a salad mix and store it in sealable bag with a piece of absorbent paper towel. This way you can take some out each day and feed it to them. You would also give them some of the other food, such as crickets, mealworms or snails and maybe some fruit.
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