It’s no secret that choosing food for your exotic pet requires some thought. There is no 50-pound bag of lizard chow on the shelf of your local supermarket. But what happens when your carefully curated meals are met with disinterest? Exotics can lose their appetites for a wide variety of reasons, and getting to the heart of the issue is necessary if you want to keep your pet happy, healthy, and hungry.
Each animal is different; what works for snakes might be completely non-viable for a lizard. With that being said, here are some basic strategies to get your picky exotic to eat.
Change Things Up
You would get bored if the only thing you ate every day was hamburgers, and exotics often feel the same. Picky eaters may just be craving some other food—either for enrichment reasons or nutritional reasons. A variety of prey items with different scents and textures can light up their brains and make mealtime more appealing. In fact, studies show that animals that enjoy regular enrichment are healthier, both mentally and physically. Reptilinks come in a variety of compositions to pique the interest of any animal!
Your animal might also be craving something else if their nutrition is lacking. Humans can crave salt or specific foods because their body subconsciously knows those items will provide the vitamins and minerals they’re missing, and the same can be true of exotics. Thus, they might lose interest in foods that aren’t meeting their needs.
Check Your Husbandry
Another reason an exotic might stop eating or become picky is if their husbandry is not on point. From certain foods being hard to digest due to an insufficient basking temp to a dirty enclosure that taints the taste of a meal, the animal’s enclosure matters. Some things to check when reconsidering your care include:
- Cool-side temperatures
- Warm-side temperatures
- Basking temperature
- Humidity range (check the floor as well as part-way up the enclosure)
- Substrate cleanliness
- Invaders (reptile mites, leftover feeders that are chewing on the animal)
- Water bowl size and cleanliness
- UV light (if applicable)
- Nighttime temperatures
- Frequency of bowel movements (to check for impaction or parasites)
Loss of appetite is a perfectly reasonable cause for going to the vet. They can check the animal’s bloodwork to make sure there is no sign of sickness that could cause the animal to be queasy, in pain, or sick.
Make Meals More Tempting
If your pet has a favorite food or is a species that primarily takes only one meal type (e.g., egg-eating snakes), spicing up that food item can intrigue the animal. Try rubbing the food item on something that smells interesting. For instance, if your tegu won’t eat their veggie and meat mash, try rubbing a frozen-thawed mouse over the top of it!
Alternatively (if you don’t want to create a meat-mouse-veggie concoction), Reptilinks offers scent juices and powders to spice up mealtime. Simply add a little bit to a meal to grab your pet’s attention. This can be especially helpful for specialist species or those transitioning from one food type to another.
Reevaluate the Feeding Schedule
Sometimes, a reptile seems picky just because they’re not really hungry. They might turn their nose up at food if their stomach is already full, so consider how you are spacing their meals. Are you feeding too often? Too much in one sitting? Changing up your feeding strategy might get them interested again.
Remember Nature
Even in captivity, exotics are governed by many of their natural instincts. Understanding how these might affect your pet can help you grasp (and possibly even predict) when and why they might start to get picky or refuse food altogether. Some possible natural processes that can interfere with hunger include:
Breeding
If your male iguana is refusing food, he might have one thing on his mind: looking for that perfect lady. It is normal for reptiles to become stricter with food and preferences during breeding season. As long as they are not losing a problematic amount of weight, this time of year will pass without issue, so you’ll just need to be patient. Offer food anyway!
Shedding
A reptile that is starting to go blue (will be shedding soon) might begin to turn their nose up at food. As they become increasingly uncomfortable and itchy due to fluid buildup between the old and new scales, they might not feel like eating. It’s also common for reptiles to pass a large bowel movement right after a shed, so their stomach might have less space while their bowels are full, leading to a decreased interest in their favorite food items. Make sure your humidity is correct for your species so they can complete their shed comfortably and quickly.
Seasons
Seasonal changes can turn reptiles off of even the most appealing snacks or make them pickier about which food they take. Reptiles are highly adapted to understand their environment—often even better than humans. Changes in daylight hours over seasons, stormy weather, or a decrease in atmospheric pressure can all make your pet want to hunker down rather than eat. Be patient with your pet and adjust your enclosure’s day/night cycle if necessary.
Space Out Handling
Even animals that enjoy handling still become slightly stressed during the endeavor. Their heart rates rise as they move more, their brains become awash with new smells outside their enclosures, and their blood pressure may change as human hands constrict parts of their bodies to keep them safe. All of these things can draw blood away from the intestines and toward the extremities or affected areas to keep them mobile and ready to escape.
As a result, the stomach may temporarily inhibit the sensation of hunger so that the body can focus on more pressing matters. Consider how often you handle your reptile. Avoid handling right before offering food, but evaluate whether even a more spaced out schedule could be contributing. It can be helpful to stop handling animals entirely until they return to their normal diet.
Change the Presentation
Most people think hard about the food item to offer, but not so much about how to offer it. Owners might assume that their pet is picky about certain food items when in reality it’s the presentation that is turning them off. If you offer a gooey egg in a bowl to no effect and then plate up a meat mash that they spring upon, you might assume that the animal is being picky about eggs. In reality, they might not like how tall the bowl is or how slippery its surface can be, so they prefer to eat off the flat, low plate.
Every animal is different, and getting to know your pet’s personality is essential for figuring out why they might go off food or choose just one food item to the exclusion of everything else. If you’re having trouble getting your animal to eat, try spicing things up with Reptilinks or adding scent juices and powders to restore their interest!