Dietary Diversity

Along with feeding your iguana the most nutritious vegetables, it is important to feed a variety of vegetables. This serves several functions. First of all, it will help stimulate appetite. No person wants to eat the same few foods all the time, and no iguana does either. Additionally, it is closer to what an iguana would experience in the wild. In the rainforest habitat of an iguana, there are thousands of species of plants that an iguana might consume, so it makes sense to include as many types as possible in captivity. Feeding your iguana a wide variety provides it with many different phytonutrients (chemicals plants contain that are not essential in the diet but do seem to provide so me health benefits; the cancer-fighting lycopenes in tomatoes are one example), which are attracting a lot of interest in the human nutritionist community at the momento Lastly-and perhaps most importantly-by including a wide variety of vegetables in the diet you minimize the possibility that the amount of any nutrient is too low. Feeding the most diverse foodstuffs you can helps ensure that your iguana will not lack any nutrients in his diet.

An iguana's diet can be broken down to a few major components: greens, other vegetables, fruits, and other items. We'lllook at each component in detail. In each section, there will be a number of examples of specific items that can be fed to an iguana, and we'll note which ones are the best. Keep in mind that iguana nutrition is not an exact science, and future studies may result in changes as to what types of plants are good or bad for these lizards.

Feeding Your Iguana

Now that you've just read all the bits about what to feed and what not to feed your iguana, you need to know how to feed him. There is nothing really complicated about this, but

there are some things to do and some things to not do. We'll be talking about the feeding schedule, food preparation, and a few minor points.

Preparation

If you are familiar with reptiles, you may have noticed that they don't really chew their food. Iguanas are no exception. For the most part, they chomp off pieces of leaves and swallow. This lack of chewing does present a choking hazard, although wild iguanas do not seem to suffocate in any numbers. Still, it is best to chop or shred all the food items into bite-sized pieces. Leafy greens can be torn and the other vegetables and fi:uits chopped. Hard vegetables, such as carrots, sweet potatoes, and beets, should be grated before offering them. Alternatively, you could lightly steam the hard vegetables, let them cool, and then chop them into small chunks.

Aside &om helping prevent your iguana &om choking, chopping up the food allows you to thoroughly mix it. Mixing the food keeps your iguana from separating out the items he prefers and leaving the other items. While it is nice to feed your iguana the food he likes, this can lead to nutritional problems. After all, a child left to his or her own preferences would be likely to eat little besides cakes and candies. Your iguana is no different.

Presented with an abundance of food and the ability to select the items he likes, he will do so, usually selecting the bits of colorful fruits and vegetables and leaving most of the nutritious greens behind. Chopping and mixing stops most of this. If you have a really picky iguana or one that is particularly adroit at sifting out only what he wants to eat, you can put all the food items into a food processor and make a thick sludge out of them. This may look unpalatable to you, but most iguanas will eat it without much fuss.

For a really picky eater, one that do es not like certain nutritious foods or likes one food to the exclusion of others, you can slowly bring him around to eating more variety. To do this, offer mixes mostIy of the food item or items your ig likes, adding a tiny bit of the food item he won't eat. As the days go by, gradually increase the proportion of the disliked item. 800n you will find your iguana accepts that item without a problem. If you want or need to do this with more than one item, you will have the most success if you try to coax your iguana to eat only one of the items at a time. If you try to hide more than one unwanted item in the food bowl, your iguana will likely catch on and reject the entire dish.