Reptile Feeding Tips & Tricks

Hey guys, so I am here with another requested video and today I'm going to be talking about tips and tricks to get your reptile to eat. I get tons of messages all the time about people having their reptiles and having issues with getting them to eat certain foods or just getting them to eat at all, so I have learned a lot of different things while keeping all of these animals and I do have some tips and tricks so hopefully they'll be able to help you. So the very first thing is basically how long have you had your reptile. A lot of people message me who have just gotten reptiles and they're worried that they aren't eating right away. This is totally normal. Once you've gotten an animal it needs time to adjust to its new surroundings and its new home so it's good to just give them some time. If it's a snake it may take like a month for them to eat, but basically if you are getting a snake you need to literally just leave it alone for the first week. Don't try to handle it or feed it, just give it time to adjust. Other types of animals you just need to leave them alone for at least a few days and then maybe try to feed, but if they aren't eating right away it's just because they're just adjusting and they're just stressed out from the move. The second thing that you should take into mind is basically the husbandry. So when it comes to the husbandry you need to make sure that whatever reptile you have, you have all of the elements correct such as the heating, the lighting, the humidity, the amount of hides and foliage. Animals need to feel safe and secure and have the right heat and proper humidity and everything correct in order to stimulate their appetite. So if you have all of those things correct and you're still having issues we're going to go over some of the things that I have found work. Number one, if you have a ball python it's very very common for them to go off of feeding so don't worry about it, it happens all the time. When you should start to worry is if your ball python hasn't eaten for so long that it's starting to lose weight, then it might be time to take it into a vet. But for the most part ball pythons can go off of feeding for months and months and they could be just completely fine and healthy. It's just something that they do. Other things for snakes are if you have a snake that isn't eating, there are so many different things you can try such as some snakes are like really picky and they want to eat at nighttime only and they don't want to be fed during the day. So there's that tip and trick. There's also you could just leave the mouse in overnight. Some of them don't like to be fed off of tongs. Some are so picky that they literally will be like picky about the type of mouse or rat such as like the fur color. So just keep trying different things. Make sure that you're completely thawing out your mouse and another tip that works is if you're thawing out a mouse and it's kind of cold, it's good to maybe dip it in some water or just heat it up a bit so that way they can see that heat and sense it with their heat pits and then they'll be more likely to go for their prey. If all else fails, you may have to revert back to going to live feeding. Sometimes snakes just need it to get going again if they just won't take the frozen thaw. So that's another thing to keep in mind. When it comes to crested geckos, a lot of people are worried that their babies aren't eating their pangea because it's very hard to tell. If your crusty is pooping, it means it's eating and there's nothing to worry about. They eat very little food so if they aren't cleaning the entire bowl out, that's totally fine. There's nothing to worry about. Again, if your animal starts losing a significant amount of weight, that's when you should be worried. So if you have a picky eater such as a veiled chameleon or just any other animal like a bearded dragon, a lot of them don't like to eat salads but you want to offer it into their diet. So what you could do is basically put insects on top of the salad. That's exactly what I do with my chameleon to get him to eat his salads and it just makes him so much more healthier, gives him more vitamins and nutrients, and hydrates him. So I'm going to go ahead and show you exactly how I do that. I'll also show you my secret trick to bearded dragons and getting them to eat their salads. This is a new trick that my friend Michelle told me about and it just works wonders. So I'm going to go ahead and show you guys all about that. So those of you out there that have a bearded dragon that won't eat their salads, which is very very common, the number one trick to use is actually bee pollen. This is what bee pollen looks like. It's like these little greens. So basically you take the bee pollen because you don't want to feed it in that form to the bearded dragon and I take a spoon and I just mash it up. So once you have mashed up that bee pollen, you want it to be very powdery such like this substance right here. You want to look just like this and we have some weird things going on. So this is going to be for my bearded dragon, blue-tongued skink, and a little bit for my veiled chameleon and I'm going to show you how I do all of that. Just to recap, this is the bee pollen, this orange stuff is squash, and then we have some greens and then an egg. The egg is obviously going to be for the blue-tongued skink. So basically this is going to be for my bearded dragon. You're just going to take a pinch of this stuff and just put it all over the top of the salad. You want to be like that salt guy that's just like glistening his steak with some salt. Dude are you excited? You are pumped! Look at you! So excited! And then on top of that salad you're also going to put some calcium right on top and then your salad is complete. You're going to do the same exact thing with the blue-tongued skink. They can have some bee pollen too. It's really really good for them. You can also put it in your crested gecko diet too. Just mix it into the pangea or the rapache, which is super good for everyone. It's good for people too. Last but not least we're gonna put this egg. I like to make it a little bit easier for him and just crack it a little bit. And there is a good source of protein. Now blue-tongued skinks aren't really known to not eat their food. Like he eats everything. They're just like amazing so I don't think anyone's gonna be worried about their blue-tongued skink not eating because they literally eat everything. But you never know so here's his food and hopefully he'll chow down on it very soon. And we are still waiting on dude. He is just taking his sweet time over there deciding if he wants to eat yet or not. And we have bamba, the veiled chameleon's food. We have adubio roach, some waxworms, some super worms, some salad, some bee pollen, and some calcium. And that is for a lot of people have fought me on feeding your veiled chameleon salads but it is really good for them. They are known to eat vegetation in the wild and it is how bamba stays so healthy and so big. So I highly recommend doing it. And so basically the trick is just to put the salad on the bottom and put the worms and the insects on top because chameleons eat based off of movement. So they need to see that movement to be attracted and when he launches his tongue at his food he will end up picking up all of the things around it such as the salad and he will end up getting more vitamins and nutrients and hydration. You're still thinking about it. And there it goes. He will literally finish this entire bowl now because there's bee pollen on it. I don't know what it is about bee pollen but I didn't even know it worked this well because my friend Michelle she got a rescue bearded dragon that had so many issues and would not eat salads and she put bee pollen on it and it literally just changed his life and he ate salads and he's super healthy now so just bee pollen is magical. As you can see dude has a roach over there and normally he would be all for the insects but with bee pollen he's literally going for the salad and doesn't even care about the insect. So again bee pollen is just the most magical thing ever. Don't understand what it is but they just absolutely love it. Look how happy he is. That is a happy bearded dragon getting all the nutrition that he needs. So I hope that this was helpful. I know that bee pollen can be really hard to find and also when you do find it it can be pretty expensive. I actually can find mine pretty cheap at a store but if you're having a hard time and can't find the bee pollen and you want to try it for your bearded dragon you can absolutely buy it from me. I'll be selling little bags like this. It has 25 grams of bee pollen in it. You're just going to mash it up just how I showed in the beginning of the video and this will last you quite a while because you're just going to be mashing it into that tiny little bit and then putting it on top of the salad. So this will just be ten dollars. I'll make a listing for it in my Etsy and I will put everything in the description below if you're interested. Again this is like beardy crack I swear. I don't know what it is but if you want your beardy to eat salad this is the stuff. So with all that said I hope that this video was helpful. If you know any other tips and tricks that are helpful to get your animals to eat please leave it in the comment for others to read and as always have a wonderful day and thank you so much for watching.