Feed a Lizard
Do you have a lizard but aren't sure how to feed it? If so, read on to find out.
Contents
Steps
- Identify the lizard. Different lizards eat different things.
- Obtain the appropriate food for your lizard. For example, anole green lizards should be fed small to medium insects, every 2-3 days. Its food must be alive. Geckos will eat meal worms, wax worms, crickets, and roaches.
- Follow the feeding instructions for your particular kind of lizard.
Anole Green Lizards
For more information see How to Care for Green Anole Lizards
- Feed crickets. One meal anoles enjoy is cricket; buy the smallest cricket offered, and if there is only "one size" at a pet store, go to a different one.
- Dust the crickets with a supplement powder at each feeding to help ensure the anoles get enough calcium and vitamins (anoles missing the key nutrients can get metabolic bone disease (MBD) and die). If you keep crickets around in bulk, "gut-load" them by feeding them a vitamin rich cricket food prior to feeding them to your lizards. This way, all of the nutritious food your crickets just ate will then, in turn, be passed on to your anole. Equally, if your crickets are starved, your anole soon will be too. Baby anoles (should you be breeding them) require micro crickets or tiny fruit flies.
- Give your lizard the occasional fast prey like small cockroaches or flies for some much needed exercise.
- Anoles may also eat waxworms, fruit flies, small worms, canned crickets, or earthworms.
- Avoid feeding anoles with mealworms. These pass through them undigested, wasting energy in eating and not getting any energy from the food.
- Put their food in separate quarters than their homes unless it's feeding time. This way the "leftovers" won't munch on your lizard while he's asleep and medium to large crickets can eat the anole's extremities. If you place the crickets in a low feeding dish, make sure the crickets you put in the container aren't hiding under food bowls and such and your anole will be thankful that they aren't ganging up on him in the night! If they're small enough, they probably won't bother your anole but some owners of anoles advise to never release or leave crickets loose in the tank with the lizard but rather to place them in a separate container, move the anole to the container for 5–10 minutes to eat and then move the anole back to his tank when done.
Leopard Gecko
For more information see How to Care for a Leopard Gecko
- Feed your geckos a varied diet on a daily basis.
- Place as much of the food in the tank as your gecko can eat in 15 minutes. Don't leave crickets hopping around all day as they will feed on your Gecko.
- Meal worms, wax worms, crickets, and roaches all make good food. Make sure to refrigerate the mealworms, as they turn into beetles if left at room temperature.
- Powder the feeding insects with Calcium + Vitamin D powder. This is very important to ensure bone health (your gecko, as are all reptiles, is vulnerable to the all too common and very painful metabolic bone disease).
Uromastyx Lizard
For more information, see How to Care for Uromastyx Lizards
- The best part about Uros is that they eat foods that can be picked up from the grocery store. Adult uros will eat a mix of dark leafy greens such as bok-choy, and spring salad mix. Remember to take out the dark stuff in the spring salad. Do not feed Uros Romaine or iceberg lettuce! Lettuce has very little nutritional value.
- Sprinkle tortoise dust onto the food to supplement it, and mix in a sprinkling of juvenile iguana pellets.
- Feed once a day in a small bowl (remember to rinse it out).
- Hatchlings require a higher dose of protein than adults, so feed them a small amount of crickets every week. If you have a wild caught lizard that doesn't eat, you will need a veterinarian to force feed it (not quite as brutal as it sounds).
Warnings
- Avoid feeding wild lizards. It will encourage them to see humans as friends, and some humans are not so friendly and will hurt lizards that come up to them.
Things You'll Need
- Food of some kind (plain potato chips, bread, etc)
- Something to place the food on (rock, plate, etc)
- A lizard to feed
