Iguana Pet Care | Is Your Lizard Getting the Proper Diet?
Iguanas are herbivorous animals, but they will eat almost everything that you offer them; be pizza, meat, sweets… meals that are bad for the iguana… His diet must include big variety of vegetables and fruits, as basil, spinach beet, (chosen) fig leaves, beetroot, sweet potato, carrot, dipped alfalfa, banana, pear, apple, damask, strawberries, kiwi… Occasionally it is possible to offer him ruff, spinach, bean sprouts, cucumber, plum, hard egg, pasta or cheese.
The variety is the most important thing, treating of they eat every two days something slightly differently. But be aware that the iguana must not eat lettuce, since it contributes very little nutrition wise, and can damage the metabolism.
It is possible to administer balanced food that is specially made for iguanas. The iguana food must be deliver washed, cut, mixed and at ambient temperature. While given them the meal, it is necessary to make sure you cut sliced the food in size that the animal could consume.
The young iguanas can eat insects as crickets, cockroaches, all of them of breeding ground, since those that we find in the houses or in the street they can have residues of poison. Also small mammals (baby rats) of the size adapted according to the animal.
The water must be changed every day. The iguana pets get accustomed to drinking from a receptacle, sufficiently big like to allow that the animal to bathe in it. If the animal is not used to this system there must be provided a system of dripping that drops water on leafs and branches, from where it will drink it.
Care and Curiosities
The ignorance on the part of the owners and the inadequate or scarce information delivered in the pet shops with regard to iguana pets’ care, increase in the risk of presenting related illnesses almost exclusively to a bad handling in these animals.
The Green iguana is not a domestic animal and they need taken care special. This pet has to be observed with a lot of attention, because the minimal sign or change in his coloration or behavior can be indicating an illness or stress. They can stress out very easily. It is necessary to redouble the care if dogs, cats or other reptiles are had also in house.
If they are not treated correctly they can cause deep scrapes, give very strong lashes with their tail or, even, to bite. Iguana pets can live between 7 and 20 years. It is a species found threatened by destruction of his habitat and by the furtive hunt (over-exploitation).
For his high fecundity and sociability, it is a species that can be supported in captivity; this can help a little to his conservation. His reproduction is sexual. The matching happens between January and February. For his birth, they are oviparous. The average period of incubation, is 84 days to a temperature of 87 ºF. The number of babies depends on the climate, and changes within 13 to 30.