kingofnobbys":3tfkghjz said:
LupeGirl8":3tfkghjz said:
So my intent was not to debate whether or not dog food is appropriate for a blue tongue skink (because that is a debate that has been hashed out in great detail elsewhere). I simply want to know is dog food as appropriate for a bearded dragon as it is for a blue tongue (whether or not it is actually appropriate). Is there any reason dog food would be worse or better for either of them? <<<< answer to that question is a definite NO , DEFINITELY NOT , no matter how upmarket the doggy food is claimed to be.
I will say that when I talk about dog food I mean 1) canned, 2) grain free, and 3) high quality dog food (the best on the market with human grade ingredients). Feeding a bluey poor quality wet dog food with grains or dry dog food is absolutely inappropriate. You are also supposed to only use dog foods made with lean meat (chicken, turkey, or rabbit). I will say that I have NEVER met a serious BTS keeper who did not think this kind of dog food was ok as a significant portion of the protein part of the diet (of course in addition to greens, veggies, and fruits). <<<< I've had internet run-ins with some here (in Australia) who claim they've been breeding BTS for decades and always use dog food who are so intrenched in this practice that they ridicule and personally attack anyone who challenges this.
I have also never heard of anyone's bluey dying a premature death or developing a serious issue from eating high quality, grain free dog food as part of their diet (and I discuss and keep in touch with many bluey keepers, almost none being breeders).<<<< I have , and it can only take 6 months on such a diet to do irrepairable damage , a good friend of mine learnt this the hard way with 3 juvenile BTS who were on a diet of pellets/dog & cat food (wet kind) that he bought from a local breeder at 6 months old, all dead from fatty liver disease before their 1st BD, despite his giving them a very good balanced diet and his excellent husbandry.
Blueys are kinda the dogs of the reptile world in that they are opportunistic omnivores that will eat almost anything they can find or scavenge (people report them eating animal droppings in the wild, and I've seen mine try to eat poop before). Unfortunately since there has been no scientific studies on whether the proteins from lean mammal meat or insects are better for blueys or cause any health issues we can only go off the results of others at this point. <<< you've not looked hard enough , maybe you need to confer with an experience reptile vet..
Personally my bluey gets Nature's Instinct Limited Ingredient Rabbit dog food, superworms, canned insects, unseasoned cooked meat from my food, eggs (cooked and uncooked), and Reptilinks (raw rabbit, fruit, and greens) for the protein part of his diet.
Listen, I am a biologist and I study wild reptiles as a job. I would be very happy to engage in an intellectual discussion with you on this subject, but your belligerent and aggressive tone is making me think you would not be open to hearing any evidence that might even slightly contradict your opinion.
You say I haven't looked hard enough for studies on whether lean mammal or insect proteins are better for blueys, so you would mind linking or pointing me to those studies (since you seem to be insinuating that you have found some)? My reptile vet (very experienced, was the zoo vet at a reptile house for many years) found my husbandry to be spot on and said my bluey was one of the healthiest he had ever seen.
I am very sorry to hear that your friend lost those three blueys, but considering all the variables involved there is no way that definitively proves that all wet dog food is bad. You haven't said what brand of wet dog food they were feeding (was it grain free, what were the ingredients, etc) or what kind of non-dietary care the hatchlings were receiving. There could have been many other factors that caused their premature deaths. A single anecdote is not scientific evidence. I could easily counter with my five or six anecdotes of blueys that have lived to adulthood and remained healthy with dogfood as part of their diet and it would be just as valid.
Your main complaints seem to be that 1) dog food contains too much fat and protein, 2) dog food contains harmful preservatives, and 3) that dog food contains too much organ meat (thus containing too many purines) which is not naturally part of a bluey's diet. So to address your points:
1) The dog food I feed is Nature's Instinct Limited Ingredient Rabbit Formula. The fat content is 4.5% and the protein content is 10%. You are saying dog food contains too much fat and protein, but both the fat and protein content of this food is significantly below the content of superworms, mealworms, dubia roaches, and crickets (as per this website:
http://www.everythingreptile.org/feeder-pics-and-information.html).
2) I did find articles saying that the preservative sodium tripolyphosphate found in dog and cat food is toxic to reptiles. However the brand I feed does not contain sodium tripolyphosphate as a preservative. If you can find evidence suggesting other specific preservatives that are harmful to reptiles I would be glad to see links to said evidence.
3) The link below leads to a study analyzing the gut contents of Tiliqua multifasciata and Tiliqua occipitalis. These are not species often kept in captivity, but they are blue tongues and since I was unable to find any other gut-analysis studies this is the most scientific evidence we have at our disposal with regard to wild diets. Considering blue tongue subspecies seem to have similar dietary needs in captivity we can probably assume that the results of this study can be roughly approximated to captive blueys as well. You insist that vertebrate food items are unnatural for blue tongues, yet this study found that they do scavenge mammalian and avian carrion (which is likely to contain organ meat). It therefore seems reasonable that some mammalian meat, including organs, would not be unnatural to provide as part of a bluey's diet (in addition to insect protein of course, which makes up a larger portion of the diet). I was interested to see that the study also implied that vegetable matter was ingested almost exclusively by accident in these blue tongues with the only vegetable matter being regularly ingested in large amounts being fruit and seeds (implying that perhaps our blueys need more protein and fruit and less greens than they are regularly fed in captivity). Not to mention the fact that the number 1 ingredient in the dog food I feed in non-organ rabbit meat (though it does contain rabbit liver as well it is not the principle or sole source of protein).
http://publications.rzsnsw.org.au/doi/pdf/10.7882/AZ.2006.009
In addition this second study linked below found that crickets are actually also very high in purines, which means feeding a bluey organ meat is not necessarily any worse than feeding it crickets:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23633284
Based on this I see no reason that high quality, grain free dog food could not make up a portion of a blue tongue skinks diet and still be quite healthy and natural. Since fat and protein levels for the high quality, grain free dog food most bluey owners feed is well within reasonable limits (which means it would not be any more likely to cause fatty liver disease than an excess of insects) the only possible issue with it would be the high purine levels from organ meat. This can cause an overabundance of uric acid which can cause gout (painful swelling of the joints) in animals that are not prepared to deal with them (which may be the reason that beardies can't do well on dog food; they are more herbivorous and therefore cannot deal with purines). I do not know of a single bluey that showed symptoms of the swollen, painful joints of gout that resulted from being fed dog food in reasonable amounts, which leads me to believe it is not a common issue.
