What Our Iggies Eat

I want to make one thing clear, right up front. This page is not about what you should feed your iguana, it's about what we feed our iguanas. There is plenty of debate, both online and off, about what the best diet for an iguana is, but you won't find any of that here. On the other hand, I do want to stress that the one thing everyone seems to agree on, and that evidence seems to support, is that animal protein of any kind is not good for your iguana. This means that it is not acceptable to feed your iguana cat food, or dog food, or hamburger, or eggs... For more detailed information about what you should and should not feed your iguana, please visit Melissa Kaplan's Anapsid.org

We make two sets of iggie food once a week - a salad of greens, and a mixture of various squashes and other vegetables as listed below.

For the greens portion of their diet, we buy one bunch each of collard, mustard greens, and turnip greens. These are shredded/cut into small bits and then stored in an airtight bag in the refrigerator. The greens stay nice and fresh all week. When the igs get fed, they each get a large helping of greens with some of the vegetable salad on top.

Left: "white" squash; Right; Acorn squash

Left: Turnip Greens; Right; Collard Greens
(58 cents each at Food4Less)

Clockwise from upper left: Acorn, spaghetti,
banana, zuccini, and sweet potatoes.

Turnip, mustard, and dandelion greens.

The final mix.

The vegetable mixture contains various combinations of the following ingredients:
Orange squash
Yellow squash
(i usually buy an acorn squash and a butternut or spaghetti squash, as well as other small summer squashes when available, and only use about 1/4 of each per mixture)
Snow peas
  (one small handful)
Green beans
  (one small handful)
Two carrots
Two brussell sprouts
One parsnip
One mango, or half a mexican papaya
1/2 yam/sweet potato
1/2 cup of rabbitt pellets
(alfalfa pellets... once added to mix, they will quickly absorb moisture and become easy for ig to eat - you can also moisten them beforehand by soaking them in a bit of water or fruit juice)

The vegetables are put through a food processor and shredded into small pieces, then they are placed in plastic baggies (one baggie per meal) and refrigerated.

  

When treat time comes, our iggies prefer the following:
- Bananas
- Peaches
- Cantelope
- Watermelon
- Fruit-flavored yogurt

   

Then there was the time the iggies found out that the folks at Iguana Zone didn't think that bananas and yogurt were a good daily treat and decided to take it out on the cat. As the note below reveals, the iggies were not amused!


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