by Networkpets » Sun Feb 28, 2010 1:15 pm
Sorry about the previous post, I was in a rush. Just feel I should elaborate a little.
Allen Repashy has the largest captive collection of crested geckos in the world. All his geckos are fed CGD exclusivly. No crickets and definantly no baby food. According to him and many other fellow hobbiest his gecko's look amazing. His diet was developed becuase of the difficulties he had with feeding baby food. Many feel it's like playing a nutritional guessing game. I have done extensive reading on the web regarding baby food. The conclusion that I have come to is rather to avoid baby food all togethor. The commercial mixes available today have been engineered specifically for crested geckos. It gives them exactly what they need in the right quantities. What has baby food been engineered for? For babies.
A few points I have noticed since switching over to a comercial diet:
-The initial change over is rather difficult, the commercial diets seem to lack the sugar content in baby food which the gecko's really enjoy.
-Since he started eating the commercial diet he started eating allot less. To the point where I got rather worried. Surprisingly enough when I weighed him he doubled in weight.
-He started using his prehensile tail allot more frequently.
-Defecation became allot more frequent.
-He became allot more active durning the night.
Any of the above points could purley be coincedental, since they were only observed by a single gecko. Overall I am very happy with the commercial diet I am feeding my gecko. I would definantly also offer crickets dusted with calcium+D3 as a form of entertainment in your geckos boring glass box. I wanted to offer my gecko purity as a treat but was advised against it since the general concensus is that once the gecko is eats baby food again he might refuse CGD again hence the weaning process starts fro scratch.
At the end of the day it's up to the gecko's owner. "You can never tell a mother what to do. If she wants to raise a child on take aways thats just what she will do"
A few tips I learnt when trying to convert my gecko to CGD:
-Start of by supplementing the baby food with CGD powder.
-Increase the amount slowly till you can smell it in the baby food.
-Once he is eating baby food+CGD. Make the CGD mix as directed. Instead of using water use apple juice.
-Once you happy that he is eating that you can slowly increase the water-apple juice ratio.
I have also heard of advanced hobbiest adding a tiny drop of honey to entice difficult feeders further. The did stress the point "tiny amount" extensivly.
Hope this is helpful to anyone reading the thread!!
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