Cactus Pads

[DragonoftheMountain]

Rainier, my BD is on a salad strike right now and i remembered that it has been mentioned here many times that cactus can be used as a good food for BDs to eat, and i bought a couple of cactus pads at the store today but i was wondering as to how it is "prepared". i was going to cut out the outside and give the inside fruit part (because of the spines on the outside of the pad), but other than that is there any thing else i need to do to prepare the cactus or maybe even make it more enticing to eat? maybe mash it up and warm it a bit? (it is kinda chilly cus it was refrigerated, i dont think cold food would be too enticing to eat).

thanks,

~DOTM

 

[portuviejo]

i've fed my Arena many cactus pears and i must say she loves the sweet taste. they can be a bit messy but if you feed them in a dish/plate the juice should be contained.

 

[DragonoftheMountain]

I have been thinking of cactus pears as well to try cus a lot of people have had good feedback from their BDs with that fruit, thanks for the tip about using the plate for those.

~DOTM

 

[NegativeCreep]

i've fed my Arena many cactus pears and i must say she loves the sweet taste. they can be a bit messy but if you feed them in a dish/plate the juice should be contained.

Wow, serious envy for having prickly pears locally available! All we have here are the nopales.

 

[peera]

I don't even cut off the outside, I just scrape off the spines, and then chop it into bite sized pieces. Cactus is the one thing all 3 of my picky eaters agree on. It's not at all nessisary to warm it up, if anything mine seem to prefer it before it warms up. You wouldn't want warm jelly, would you?

 

[jscott]

i know this thread is labeled cactus pads but i just wanted to say something about preparing cactus fruit; i am paranoid about whatever goes into my dragons so i try to remove anything that might cause a problem.

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i usually take the fruit and carefully rub it with a damp paper towell. the point of this is to remove any excess spines.

slice the fruit as if you were cutting a fresh loaf of bread, about 1/4 inch thick(i usually throw the two end pieces away).

to remove the seeds, use a sharp-tipped knife and carefully cut around the entire seed cluster as close as possible(theres alot of good stuff right near the seeds). throw the seeds away, these cactus pears are 35cents or less... i think in this instance its ok to be alittle picky.

once youve removed all the seeds you should be left with several cactus rings with outter skin attached. use the same sharp knife to slice as close to the skin as possible, idealy leaving only a ring of pure cactus "meat" .

dice the rings into small, managable chunks. they are slimey so your dragon can't grab them with his tounge.

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i know this seems wastefull but these things are so cheap and there is no litter involved. i think it makes for a great presentation too. after preparing my dragons food, im tempted to take a bite .

 

[DragonoftheMountain]

thanks everyone! this definitely helped me with all of my questions, i will try wat everyone suggested.

~DOTM