Fire Skinks and pinkies...

I'm having a little difficulty finding more info on this. Most of the info I can find is caresheets that suggest feeding pinkies to your skink no more than once a month. My skink seems to LOVE them. I've offered pinkies 3 times since I got him in March and twice since Aug and his feeding response is pretty impressive.

I'm just wondering, why it is suggested to limit pinkies to once a month?

Thanks in advance.

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bump...

Not really sure but I know overall mice pinkies are low nutritional value and are about 85% moisture. As opposed to maybe a rat pinky or a weaned mouse whose calcium and protein percentages are higher.

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Originally Posted by craigafrechette

I'm having a little difficulty finding more info on this. Most of the info I can find is caresheets that suggest feeding pinkies to your skink no more than once a month. My skink seems to LOVE them. I've offered pinkies 3 times since I got him in March and twice since Aug and his feeding response is pretty impressive.

I'm just wondering, why it is suggested to limit pinkies to once a month?

Thanks in advance.

Sent from my SM-J700T1 using Tapatalk

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Probably something to do with them being largely insectivorous. Sure, if they come upon a nice little nest of rodents in the wild they might gorge but it's not going to be a common occurrence. When feeder insects are so readily accessible, there's really no good reason to deviate from the more natural diet.

Thanks guys

Quote:

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Originally Posted by craigafrechette

I'm having a little difficulty finding more info on this. Most of the info I can find is caresheets that suggest feeding pinkies to your skink no more than once a month. My skink seems to LOVE them. I've offered pinkies 3 times since I got him in March and twice since Aug and his feeding response is pretty impressive.

I'm just wondering, why it is suggested to limit pinkies to once a month?

Thanks in advance.

Sent from my SM-J700T1 using Tapatalk

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Because of the very high fat content when compared to insects. Skinks might happen upon some rodents in the wild but it's not gonna be as common as the main staples of their diet. Therefore their systems aren't designed to handle that fat load. This can cause them to get a disease called fatty liver disease and if they don't get that they'll just get regular fat which isn't very healthy for reptiles or well most things.

There are benefits however to offering them as treats, one being the added boost in calcium which is great, but like most treats they are best used in moderation. If your feeder supplier is out of bugs for whatever reason doubling up on pinkies in a month isn't gonna kill them but its best to keep those situations few and far between.

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Originally Posted by Jhill001

Because of the very high fat content when compared to insects. Skinks might happen upon some rodents in the wild but it's not gonna be as common as the main staples of their diet. Therefore their systems aren't designed to handle that fat load. This can cause them to get a disease called fatty liver disease and if they don't get that they'll just get regular fat which isn't very healthy for reptiles or well most things.

There are benefits however to offering them as treats, one being the added boost in calcium which is great, but like most treats they are best used in moderation. If your feeder supplier is out of bugs for whatever reason doubling up on pinkies in a month isn't gonna kill them but its best to keep those situations few and far between.

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Thank you. This was more or less where my thinking was. Was hoping to confirm my thoughts.