IGUANA CARE, FEEDING, AND SOCIALIZATION By Melissa Kaplan anapsid.org

Related Articles * Preface Part 1: Introduction Part 2: Creating a Home Part 3: Food Selection Part 4: Food Preparation and Feeding Part 5: Taming and Socialization Part 6: You, Your Iguana, and Your Reptile Veterinarian Part 7: Summary of Key Points Part 8: Footnotes, Article and Website References

If you thought shopping for all these vegetables and greens and trying to figure out where to stash them in your refrigerator was stressful, the fun has just begun. Now you have to learn how to make the salads and serve them!

Food Preparation

Iguanas, though equipped with a set of very sharp teeth, do not chew their food. Instead, they gulp it rather like a dog gobbling its food. Nonetheless, I regularly see iguana owners and pet stores put out a lovely selection of foods--whole broccoli florets, whole grapes, lengths quartered or sliced carrots, cubes of raw acorn squash, dry monkey biscuit, even whole apples. They apparently do not realize that their animal is unable to eat, deciding the iguana must not be hungry, or that "iguanas don't eat very much."

Fortunately, with the aid of a full-sized or mini food processor, a Salad ShooterŪ, mandolin or similar hand-held or counter-top food slicer/shredder, or even a pair of strong arms and a good old sharp grater, enough Basic Salad can be made to last a week or more. The salad, stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator, is ready to whip out and spoon into the iguana's food dish, then place the remainder back into the refrigerator. If the leafy greens have been similarly prepared (leaves separated, washed, blotted dry, torn into pieces and placed in a ziplock bag with all the air squeezed out, or one of the new zip bags made for vegetables), then feeding the iguana quickly - and nutritiously - each morning is a snap.

The History of the Basic Salad

The iguana salad recipe that follows has become known around the Internet as the MK iguana salad, MK's salad, or the MK diet. It has been published in various forms through the years, on care sheets and posted around the Internet. As people talked about it, or were giving advice to new iguana owners, they started referring to it by some variation of "the MK salad" name just for the sake of calling it something short and easy. The mix of vegetables, alfalfa and fruit is just one component of the overall diet I recommend. The salad, plus the leafy greens, plus appropriate vitamin and mineral supplements, form the iguana's captive diet. The supplemented salad, while healthy enough to feed on its own for a period of time when leafy greens are not available, is intended to be a part of a total diet.

For years I did not include a specific recipe, figuring that iguana keepers were more than able to concoct their own from the discussions of vegetables and greens that were identified as being safe for frequent use and those suitable only for occasional use. As more people gained web access and clamored for a specific recipe, I developed the "Basic Salad" recipe for those who, due to busy work and family schedules (or because they simply didn't know their way around a produce department!) wanted a no-brainer approach to salad making.

The ingredient list in the Basic Salad recipe is not meant to be a finite list. It is not intended to be the only food you can or should feed your iguana. However, iguanas fed this salad for months and years on end will do just fine on it. If you have the time and inclination and access to produce to vary it within the other guidelines, vary it! If you don't, don't! It is meant to be as flexible as you need it to be while still providing the overall guidelines to ensure your iguana and other herbivores are fed a balanced diet that falls within the nutritional recommendations for protein, fiber, fat, carbohydrate, and supply the calcium:phosphorous ratio as we know them to be at this time.

The overall diet is not high in phosphorous as some people have stated (in fact, it comes out to a 2.1:1 Ca:P ratio). Any vegetarian and/or grain based diet runs the risk of being high in phosphorous and low in calcium. Any diet high in leafy greens and certain vegetables is going to have a lousy calcium oxalate:calcium ratio. That is why I have chosen to incorporate trade-offs in the overall diet. For example, instead of using high oxalate carrots all the time, I use orange (Winter) squashes, which are not high in oxalates, enabling me to not worry too much about feeding collards, mustard and dandelion greens, all of which also contain oxalates. Kale and chard are high in oxalates and high in goitrogenic compounds. So I opt to feed them and other goitrogenic vegetables only occasionally. I opt not to feed spinach (and took parsley out of the diet years ago) because it is very high in calcium oxalates, and there are plenty of other leafy greens I can choose from and still provide a variety of tastes and textures over time.

That being said, when I am making myself a spinach salad, I'll toss some spinach leaves in their pile of greens. My iguanas and tortoises eat everything I give them, have never showed signs of being bored, and are healthy, hardy and thriving. So, too, are the iguanas of the thousands of iguana keepers I've met through the past decade who have obtained this diet information from the Internet, herp society newsletters, online forum, magazines, friends or their vets.

Because any diet we can provide our iguanas is, at best, only a weak imitation of the highly varied diet they eat in the wild, I have long felt that it is appropriate to supplement their diet with multivitamin and calcium supplements. My concerns along this area were borne out by research done by reptile veterinarian and nutrition researcher Susan Donoghue who also found that regular supplements are important. This has nothing to do with any particular inadequacies in the diet, but everything to do with the fact that, no matter how good our captive diet is, it simply is not and never will be the same as the seasonally varied wild diet. (In fact, the Journal of the American Medical Association recently determined that human vegans are at higher risk of inadequate vitamin intake or absorption of vitamins [JAMA. 2002;287:3116-3126][8]. Iguanas are vegans, eating no animal protein nor anything derived from animals, such as honey, eggs, cheese, etc.)

Wild iguana diets may be high in phosphorous and calcium oxalates. We simply do not know, nor will we ever know unless someone is able to fund and conduct an in-depth analysis of the hundreds of plants and plant parts consumed by wild iguanas. There are other factors that affect the iguanas' ability to metabolize and handle harmful phytocompounds in captivity. The chronic low levels of stress in captivity, coupled with chronic mild dehydration, may well affect their ability to metabolize nutrients and deal with secondary plant compounds. Adding additional vitamins and minerals in the form of supplements can, as it does in humans with absorption disorders, help make sure that the iguanas get what they need.

The best argument for or against this diet, of course, is in the blood tests and x-rays of iguanas maintained on this diet as well as their growth and development. When constructed properly, according to the guidelines above and maintained in a proper physical environment, these iguanas do not get metabolic bone disease and their growth rate and sexual maturity are comparable to those of wild iguanas.

Basic Salad

The Basic Salad is the vegetable, alfalfa and fruit mixture. It is made constructed from fresh, raw vegetables including at least one green and one orange vegetable, parsnip and alfalfa (for protein and color), and a fruit (for moisture and color). This forms the foundation of the iguana diet. Both a calcium supplement and multivitamin should be added, the amount and frequency of each dependent upon the iguana's age and health status. For more information, see the article on vitamin supplements.

Remember
The Basic Salad is just part of the total diet. It is served along with the leafy greens. If at first your iguana ignores the Basic Salad and eats only the greens, try withholding the greens until he starts eating the Basic Salad. Once he is eating the salad without hesitation, then you can reintroduce the greens.

Green Vegetable
For the green vegetable, use whole fresh green beans, snap peas or snow peas, that is, the peas and their edible pods. Wash the pods well, then chop them by steel-knifing them in the processor or chop by hand. Remember to process or hand-chop until the pieces are small enough to be easily swallowed by a lizard who gulps food rather than chews it.

To vary the flavor and smell, you can occasionally throw in a small amount of broccoli, bok choy, Brussels sprouts.

Orange Vegetable
For the orange vegetable, concentrate on the winter squashes. These are the hard squashes that, when cut upon, reveal their deep-to-pale orange flesh. Winter squashes include acorn, banana, delicata, Hubbard, kabocha, pumpkin, spaghetti and turban. These squashes are called "winter" squashes because, when kept in dark, cool, dry places, they will stay fresh for several months. Those harvested during the mid- to late summer will stay fresh throughout the winter months when kept this way. This makes it easy for most of us to stock up on fresh pumpkins when their price falls just before Halloween and feed fresh pumpkin throughout the winter to our iguanas (and baked pumpkin for ourselves!). If you need to, microwave the harder squashes until they are just soft enough for you to peel and cut into lengths that will fit through the feed tube of the food processor or other shredder, or comfortably hold while you chop or grate by hand.

Some owners have reported that kabocha squash brings out blue accent skin colors on some iguanas, more so than other winter squashes. All squashes are high in carotenoids which, in other species, are known to bring out some latent coloring.

Crookneck and scallop, both summer squashes, are fine to use in season. They have the soft skins that are cooked and eaten along with the flesh and seeds. The two squashes that are not suitable for use as anything other than an occasional treat are cucumbers and zucchini. Both are poor, nutritionally speaking.

Carrots and sweet potatoes can also be fed, but they do contain oxalates, so use them occasionally, sticking to winter squashes as your primary orange vegetable. Yams are okay occasionally; they contain oxalates as well as saponins, so should be used less frequently than the carrots or squash. These vegetables should be shredded. If you are also using a parsnip, the parsnip can be shredded at the same time as the orange vegetable.

Other Vegetables
Your iguana may enjoy some of the following vegetables that may be used in small amounts. These should be considered as flavorful additions to the Basic Salad, not a replacement for the more nutritious vegetables. Try mushrooms, bell peppers, onions, green onions, other root vegetables, cactus pad, star fruit, asparagus, okra, and just about anything you see in the produce department that looks interesting. Some of these vegetables have oxalates and other chemicals that you don't want too highly represented in your herbivore's diet, so do go easy on them.

Fruit
Fruit is used more for color and moisture than it is for its nutritional contribution to the overall salad. Just as some vegetables are more nutritious than others, so too are some fruits better than others in this regard.

Many types of fruit are suitable for the salad. Listed in descending order in terms of nutritional contribution: raspberries, blueberries, mulberries, strawberries, pears, plums, mangos, papayas, cherries, apricots, cantaloupe, dates, prickly pear cactus and kiwi (both skinned) are all good fruits. As you may have noticed, most of these represent the most expensive fruits found in the market, or are only available seasonally. Fortunately, most markets keep a year round stock of frozen blueberries, strawberries and cherries, and you can sometimes find frozen mango at specialty stores such as Trader Joe's.

Figs are the highest in calcium, with dried figs highest of all. Unfortunately, fresh figs are rather expensive unless you are lucky enough to have a tree. Dried figs are available in grocery stores during the November-December holidays, but can often be found throughout the year at health food stores. Dried figs must be soaked in water (either cold water overnight in the refrigerator, or about one-half hour in hot water) to rehydrate them before feeding them out.

Fruits should be steel-knifed or finely chopped, then mixed in with the vegetables.

Fruits suitable for occasional treats include banana (high in phosphorous), carambola (star fruit - high in oxalates), melons, berries, and grapes and soaked raisins. Hard fruits should be shredded. Berries, melons, grapes and reconstituted raisins should be chopped into smaller pieces.

Do not feed the melon skin, banana skin (unless you buy organically grown bananas - all others are treated with a fungicide to retard mold growth on skin). Do not feed papaya, pear, apple, plum, peach, nectarine, or other seeds. The tiny seeds in berries, grapes, and banana are fine. Some iguana keepers have reported that their hatchlings became impacted after several weeks of eating fruits with lots of tiny seeds, such as figs and raspberries. Along with making sure that all dried fruits are thoroughly reconstituted, alternate these seeded fruits with ones from which you can easily remove
the seeds.

Alfalfa
Additional protein, fiber and calcium is provided by alfalfa. The best forms to use are the powders or leaf teas packaged for human consumption. These are preferable to the small mammal alfalfa food pellets and crumbled alfalfa hay, as discussed above.

If you are using pellets or tablets, they can be ground in the food processor (use the steel knife), nut grinder or coffee grinder--if your ears can stand the noise. The pellets may also be left whole and mixed with the vegetables where they should be broken down rapidly by the moisture in the salad. If they are not, add some water to the salad, or soak the pellets briefly before mixing into the salad. If they still don't soften enough to fall apart on their own, stop using that product and switch to another brand or, better, a powder or leaf product made for humans.

Multivitamin and Calcium Supplementation
The questions and issues relating to multivitamins and calcium supplementation is addressed at length in the Vitamin Supplementation article. For convenience, I have excerpted the age/health status/frequency table here, but it is recommended that you do read the full article at some time.

The amount of calcium and vitamin supplement will vary depending upon the quantity of food you are serving as well as the iguana's health and age. The rule of thumb, however unscientific it is, is to sprinkle a pinch or two of the vitamin powder on and mix it in.

Thoroughly mix the vegetables, fruit, and alfalfa together. Add the calcium and vitamin supplements, add any thiamin supplement if necessary, and once again mix the salad thoroughly. Place the salad in an airtight food storage container and keep refrigerated.

Most books say to sprinkle the vitamins on top of the food. This probably stems from the time when iguanas were neither heated nor fed properly so they rarely finished their food. Sprinkling the vitamins on top meant they were going to ingest more of the vitamins but, as we know, a lousy diet or environment is not going to be fixed by gobbling vitamins. So, thoroughly mix those vitamins into the salad before you set it out for your iguana.

A special reminder to those who opt to use Dr. Donoghue's Quantum Nutrition food mixes. If you use the Quantum Nutrition mix as the primary food for your herbivores or omnivores, then you should not be adding any additional vitamins or minerals to the reptile's food other than as she may direct for certain situations or as directed by your reptile veterinarian for gravid iguanas.

Basic Salad Recipe

While the proportions of food types remains the same, the actual amount of the food you make will increase as your iguana grows bigger and consumes a greater quantity of food.

The following recipe makes approximately 3.5 cups of Basic Salad:

1/2 cup shredded green beans
1/2 cup shredded squash
Alfalfa*
1 medium parsnip, shredded**
1/4 cup minced fruit
Multivitamin and calcium supplements

* The quantity of alfalfa you use will depend upon the alfalfa product you are using. You want to add about 15 grams of protein. That is about 1/2 cup of alfalfa rabbit pellets, or about 1/4 cup or less of alfalfa powder or leaf tea.

** If parsnips are a seasonal vegetable where you live, the crop's off season, you can use 1/2 cup shredded asparagus, or 1/2 cup drained, rinsed, and chopped canned cooked lima beans, plus additional calcium to make up for the lousy calcium:phosphorus ratio in beans. Beans are acceptable for short-term use only due to their phosphorous content and other chemicals that can impede the uptake of minerals and trace elements.

Asparagus is comparable in protein to parsnip, but does contain oxalates, so should not be a long-term staple.

Be sure to prepare the foods in very small pieces, finely chopped, minced or shredded, as appropriate for the type of food. The smaller the pieces, the more they can fit into their stomachs, and the more efficiently it can be digested. The salad, however, does not need to be pureed to a mush. While individual iguanas may eventually develop a preference as to the size of shred/mince they prefer, most do fine when the shreds or mince are about the size of cooked white rice grains. [14]

Serving the Salad
Make the salad accessible. Another common first-timer mistake is to buy for their hatchling iguana the food and water bowls typically sold in pet stores. The iguanas cannot easily see into them, let alone get to the contents. The result is that it can take longer for the iguanas to figure out that there is something for them in those bowls. Given that this is a highly stressful time for iguanas, there is no reason to add to that stress by using inappropriate servers for their food and water.

Serve the salad on a plate, jar lid or, for larger iguanas, in wide-mouthed bowls or crocks, with the leafy greens piled nearby. Some iguana keepers use paper, foam or plastic plates so that the iguana can get right up to (and into) their food. Be careful using paper plates as, when soggy, they are easy to tear and the iguana may end up eating pieces of the paper. Foam plates have no defense against a juvenile or adult iguana's teeth, which are easily able to tear pieces off, intentionally or otherwise. The best option, then, is a plastic plate. Sturdy plastic plates, designed to be used indefinitely, can usually be found in the houseware aisles of most supermarkets and super-drugstores such as Long's and Walgreen's.

Experience will tell you how much of the salad and greens to offer. Hatchling iguanas appear to eat very little, so start them off with a tablespoon or so of mixed salad and a small pile of greens. If they finish eating what you feed them in the morning feeding, give them a little more. When they regularly eat and finish their second serving, increase the amount you give them in their first serving.

Some iguanas of all ages will graze again in the afternoon, especially during warmer weather. Some hatchlings will come down at night and eat a little.

Iguanas will eat less in the days just before and after their shed starts, an event that occurs on average every 4 to 6 weeks. They will also taper off during the winter months, and during breeding season. Please read the articles on Reptile Skin Shedding and Breeding Season Basics to find out more about the behavioral and other changes associated with these periods.

Picky Eaters

As with humans, picky eaters are made, not born (or hatched). With hatchling iguanas, and iguanas who have been allowed to dictate what they will and will not eat, it can be a nerve-wracking, hair-pulling experience to try to get them to eat what you want they should be eating. As discussed above, you cannot rely on the iguana to make sound food choices for itself. Neither can you give in to them when they refuse to eat the food you are serving.

With the possible exception of figs and bananas, wild iguanas don't have access to the food we have to offer them. The leafy greens we offer at least look like wild iguana food, but they from are different plants. As for the mixed vegetable/alfalfa/fruit salad, it looks like nothing the iguanas eat in the wild.

As a result, many hatchling iguanas refuse to eat the salad because they do not recognize the salad as food. Others tentatively taste the greens, and then pick certain types of greens to eat, ignoring the others. While that isn't the end of the world if the green happens to be dandelion or collard, it is a problem if that green happens to be romaine or one of the lettuces.

If you find the iguana is eating the greens and ignoring the salad, serve the salad in the morning and offer the greens in the afternoon after the salad has been eaten. It may take several days before the iguana will actually eat the salad, especially if you have previously caved in to the iguana's "hunger strike" tactics by giving them the food you have trying to get them to stop exclusively eating.

For more information and suggestions on dealing with these types of eaters, please read the Picky Eaters article.

Food Tips and Tricks

While most large urban centers are blessed with an amazing array of fresh produce all year long, many iguana keepers are not so lucky. For those who lack access to such abundance, here are some suggestions.

Asian markets are a good place to find greens like mustard and pea vines.

Winter squash and carrots can usually be found in the frozen foods section of the market. For short-term use, you can use high quality baby foods. Jars of squash, carrot or sweet potato are generally all to be found in the baby food aisle. Frozen peas or green beans are widely available all year long, as are pea and green bean baby foods. Frozen berries are another widely available food stocked all year, and can be found in many baby food lines.

While baby foods are very helpful to have in a pinch, they should not be used as a regular part of the long-term diet. Don't be shy about asking your produce manager to carry some of the foods you need on a regular basis. Also, venture out and check out other grocery stores - often one or two stores carry more produce than do all the others in the same area. And don't be shy about asking for help identifying foods that are there.

Try including a little of your leftovers: rice, plain chopped cooked noodles, whole wheat or grain breads can be mixed in with the salad. Keep in mind that not only do these foods have a lousy calcium:phosphorous ratio, but some contain purines which can, over the long term, cause kidney damage. Some also prevent the uptake of certain vitamins, minerals and trace elements, so use grains only in very small amounts and only as occasional additions to the salad. While you can boost the calcium supplement a bit to counteract the high phosphorus content of these foods, you can't counteract the other nutrition-related problems they cause.

Keep the salad dressings, cheese, fatty sauces, and spicy or sugary foods for yourself: iguanas can develop bad eating habits and junk food addictions just as easily as people...and they are just as difficult to correct!

Keeping The Food Fresh

The iguana salad and greens will start to wilt and spoil in the heat of the enclosure. You can keep the food fresher longer by making sure to place it in the coolest part of the enclosure.

Be sure to throw away (or compost) any food leftover at the end of the day. Wash the food bowl out with hot, soapy water, rinsing thoroughly before reuse. Many iguana keepers have two sets of water and food bowls so that they can save time in the morning by using the clean one to put out the fresh food, putting the previous day's bowl in the sink to soak after emptying it.

If you find the food spoiling well before the end of the day even when placed in the cool end, first check your temperatures to make sure it is the coolest place and that the temperatures are where they are supposed to be. If it is still spoiling, you can set the bowl of food in a larger bowl of ice. You can also freeze some salad in ice cube trays and serve a mixture of salad from the refrigerator and one or two iced salad cubes. The frozen salad will take a while to defrost and will keep the rest of the salad cooler in the mean time.

Hand-Feeding

Be careful when hand-feeding iguanas. While that is often a good way to get a reluctant iguana to eat or to try a new food, they can easily become used to hand feeding and will refuse to feed from a dish. Many quickly realize that this is a great way to manipulate you, with the end result that the iguana, not the human, gains the upper hand in the relationship.

Iguanas who only accept hand feeding cause another problem. It is hard enough to find a suitable caretaker if you have to go out of town or are otherwise unable to provide the primary care, including feeding, for your iguana for a long period of time. Many temporary caretakers are too nervous or afraid of iguanas to put themselves anywhere near the iguana's mouth, let alone to actually sit there and try to hand feed the iguana for 20 to 30 minutes.

It's a major problem if the only hand from which he will feed is yours.

Your being away, or other major changes in the iguana's daily routine, such as the one that results in your being away or otherwise not involved with his daily care, causes enough stress to induce behavioral changes. Many iguanas go off their feed during these times, while others will eat, but not their usual amount. You are ensuring that your iguana will not eat if you permit him to train you to feed it by hand only. (For more information on stress, please see the Change-Related Stress article elsewhere at this site.)

Iguanas often do not accept new foods when they are first offered. It may take several days, even weeks, before they realize it is food or will try to eat it. This is one reason why vegetables and fruits should be finely chopped, grated or shredded and mixed thoroughly together - it makes it difficult to pick out the "good" bits. While offering a new food by hand can be a good way for your iguana to get interested enough to try a new food, especially if they like trying whatever they see you eating, go ahead and try introducing them to a new food item by hand.

Iguanas' food tastes change over time, just as people's food tastes change. A food that used to make the iguana leap across the room may fall out of favor only to be replaced by a previously detested food. The same is true when offering hibiscus, nasturtium and geranium leaves and flowers, rose petals and dandelion flowers.

The rule is, don't give up. Essential foods can be mixed in with the salad. Fun foods, such as flowers and leaves, can be offered now and again to see if there is any change in their appeal.

When an iguana is self-feeding without any problem, you can feel free to offer treats by hand. Hand-feeding treats is a way to reinforce the iguana-human bond through a fun and rewarding interaction, though the perception of reward may be different for the iguana than for the human!

Feeding iguanas is kind of like keeping iguanas. There's a lot to do and learn initially, and it may take awhile to develop a pattern, but when done consistently it will become automatic and will leave you more time to enjoy your iguana rather than merely maintaining it.

Feeding Time

I have found that many people wait until they get home from work, in the late afternoon or even at night, to feed their iguanas. Iguanas are diurnal animals who forage, eat and begin digesting the day's food during the mid-day hours, not during the cooler nighttime temperatures. A hungry iguana may well eat heartily at night, but much of the digestive processes are delayed, hampering the body's ability to process the maximum amount of nutrients available for uptake.

Caring for iguanas and other exotics properly involves our having to adapt our lives to their needs. When it comes to feeding day-time eaters, it means getting up earlier so that you have the time you need to prepare and serve their food. Preparing a week's worth of food at a time will save you time in the morning because then you just have to dish it out and put the fresh food and water in their enclosure or feeding area.

If you can't get food in there in the morning, arrange to have another family or household member to it. There are not a few iguana owners who work swing or third shift, come home, fall into bed about the time others are just getting up for the day. But they set their alarm so that they can get up, feed and clean the iguana enclosure, and spend some time with the iguana before going back to sleep. If you can't do this, and there is no one else in your home who can do this, seriously re-think keeping an iguana.

Water

Many books state that iguanas don't drink. Iguanas do.

Other books say you should put a bowl of water in their enclosure only for a limited period of time, such as for only one-half hour a day. Unfortunately, since the iguana can't tell you when he is thirsty, your designated water period may not be when he wants to drink. It's also just plain lousy pet care, regardless of the species.

The problem is that if the iguana is not particularly thirsty, or not warm enough to move comfortably, or has just gotten comfortable in a new position, he will ignore the water. Most drinking is done at the time they come down to eat. Since iguanas may eat more than once a way, water should be available the entire time, as well.

Most iguana keepers keep a bowl of water in the enclosure at all times. This not only makes it available to the iguana whenever the iguana wants it, it also helps, in a small way, to increase the humidity in the enclosure. The larger the surface area of water, the more rapid the rate of evaporation.

As with the food bowl, make sure that the iguana can see into and safely reach the water in the water bowl. It should not be so deep that if he falls in he will drown if he panics when he can't get out. A boiled rock can be placed in a large bowl to give him something to stand on. A ramp on the outside of the bowl, leading up to the rim of the bowl, can be installed temporarily until the iguana gets big enough to not require its use.

Make sure that the ramp outside the bowl, and the rock inside, is secured so that they can't easily be moved around and cause accidental injury.

Water bowls and the water in them tend to get scummy after a while. Even though you use fresh, clean water and replace it every morning, the bowl itself will develop a layer of scum. To prevent this, wash the bowl daily with hot, soapy water, rinsing it thoroughly before reusing.

Pooping
As new iguana owners soon learn, poop and pooping are the terms most iguana people use when referring to the act of and product of defecation.

Many iguanas will defecate in their water bowl. While this makes it very easy to keep his enclosure clean, it does present a problem in that the bowl needs to be removed as quickly as possible and replaced with a fresh bowl of water. The dirty bowl should be washed thoroughly and disinfected before being reused.

Iguanas are excellent swimmers and will frequently poop while partially or completely immersed in water. Try putting a large tub of water, one big enough for your iguana to get into, in the cool side of the enclosure. Place the drinking water next to the food bowl.

An alternative is to get up a little earlier so that you can run a bath and let your iguana bathe and poop in the bathtub. You will need to clean and disinfect the tub afterwards, but this can be easily incorporated into the routine when you keep everything you need handy in the bathroom. You will find more information on these subjects in the Swimming - Not Just a Bathroom Activity and the Cleaning and Disinfecting articles.

Date Published: 4/21/2003 12:46:00 PM