Help! Feeding Question????

[QuintessentialQt]

Okay.. maybe I'm just being way over protective and paranoid because these are my first cresties BUT... I have a possibly stupid question about feeding. I've only had my cresties 2 days and they're approx. 1 month old... how much should they be eating?? At the moment they will only eat baby food off my finger.. I've put some in their viv but they haven't touched it unless I feed it to them manually.. Like I said before these 2 are my first experience with cresties and reptiles at all and I just want to make sure they're eating enough. I spent 3 months preparing for them and adore them and just don't want anything to go wrong. Right now Martini is eating about 3-4 finger tips of food a day and Geico is eating about 2... Granted I noticed that when I bought them they were in the ending stages of shedding and I know they're less likely too eat as much at that time but I just want to make sure they're getting the right nutrients and are/remain healthy.. Right now I'm feeding them the homemade garbo diet which they really seem to like when I feed it to them but am planning on grabbing some clarks to be sure.. So any suggestions or opinions would be greatly appreciated... Besides my eating concerns they seem to be doing really well. They've relaxed a lot and let me pat them etc. altho holding is still out of the question..
Thanks in advance for the help/suggestions..
~Kate

[ericdrob67]

Hey Kate.... Yes your just being over protective/worrysome.... but thats good it shows how much you care for your new Cresties.

Its not uncommon for cresteds to go several days or even a week+ without food.... Biggest concern is to make sure they have drinking water. I have several crested that eat every single day and some that only seem to eat every 2-3 days. What i like to do is to provide food 24/7... that way they have how ever much food they want. I do a 2 days of clarks/1 day crix schedule. Wild gecko diet analsys found that thier diet was 50-75% fruit/ 25-50% insect..... so as long as your schedule falls somewhere in these ranges youll have no probs. Higher protein = faster growth rate too.

[Lumpynutz]

I suggest cutting out the baby food completely or perhaps giving it to them only on occasion as a treat. They will quickly get hooked on the baby food and pretty soon it will be all they want. I've had pretty good success feeding a mixture of t-rex crested diet mixed with clarks gecko diet that all my geckos seem to enjoy. Babyfood without supplementation, I'm sure as you know does not have adequate nutrition that a young growing gecko needs. I also gut load, and dust feeder roaches and crickets on alternate days. If these are you're first crested geckos, make sure you mist them about twice a day so they won't have any shedding problems which can be fatal. Good luck!

[Dragontown]

Good advice already given here as far as feeding, so I'll address the handling! If you sit on the floor and handle one... just let it walk hand to hand... like a treadmill. It generally takes them about 2 minutes to settle in... feel the warmth from your hands etc. You'll sit on the floor so in case it jumps it won't fall far and won't get injured (of course if there's a cat in the house, all bets on that are off!). If you hand feed the baby food, that's also a good way to get them accustomed to handling quickly. Enjoy them!