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| FAQ - Blue Tongued Skinks: Tiliqua sp. |
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Diet
*Never offer scorpions or lightning bugs.
Temperature and
Lighting Daytime ambient temperature (everywhere in
the enclosure) should be maintained around 85 degrees F (29 - 32 C), with a basking site about 90-95 degrees F (32-35 C).
Night time ambient temperature should be maintained at 75 - 80 degrees F (29.5 - 35 C).
Housing
In the wild skinks live in areas with heavy ground cover,
including suburban backyards and gardens. As they are not very good climbers, it is best to have an enclosure that is long rather than high. Think “Long and
Low”. Australian wildlife code requires the enclosure for a full grown skink to be 2.5 times the
length of the skink by 2.0 times the length of the skink.
This amount of space will allow the skink to move about freely between warmer and cooler zones, forage for live food (crickets, snails and grubs) as well as
provide enough space for live plants and a water dish. Two hide boxes should be provided, a dry and a moist.
The “moist” hide box should have moistened spagnum moss (washed with soil removed) or damp sponges placed in it. Do not use peat moss. A moist
moss hide box is vital to preventing one of the most common reasons veterinarians see skinks, toe loss from difficult shedding. The dry house can be
anything from a shoe box to an artifical hollow log. Recommended
cage substrates include coarse gravel, dry orchid bark, forest mulch, and
folded paper. The majority of
intestinal impactions occur due to sand (including Calci-Sand and Kritter Crumble), crushed
walnut shell, or other substrates composed of small, equal-sized particles
and therefore these are not recommended.
Indoor-outdoor carpeting is also not recommended due to the
possibility of carpet threads constricting toes or being ingested. Due to the heat ande cold extremes of the
Sonoran desert, it is not recommended to house skinks outdoors in Arizona. Gut-Loading Gut-loading is the
practice of feeding insects a diet high in calcium, protein, and other
nutrients prior to offering the insects to reptiles and amphibians.
Domestic crickets and meal worms should be fed a diet consisting of
four parts chicken or turkey starter mash and one part calcium carbonate
for two or three days before offering the crickets to your pet. Also,
offer the crickets water in a shallow dish or wet sponge.
Gut-loading beyond 2-3 days is not beneficial, and can actually
decrease the life expectancy of the insects. © Sonora Veterinary Group, 2011 Free for distribution with proper citation. |
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There are eight species of Blue Tongue skink
all of which are found in Australian and the neighboring islands (New Guinea, Tasmania, and some islands of Indonesia) where they are known simply as
Blue tongue lizards or “blueys”. They are large, docile, ground-foraging lizards easily recognized by the blue tongue within a pink mouth. With
the exception of the Pigmy Blue-Tongued (an endangered subspecies thought to have been extinct), adults grow to 17 to 24 inches and about
2 pounds. In captivity, with proper diet and husbandry, skinks can live about 20 years.
Being solitary creatures, Blue tongue skinks
are best housed individually, as fighting with cage mates can occur between all combinations of blue tongue skinks. If breeding is desired, males and
females should be introduced together only during spring or early summer and not left together unattended as serious injury can occur.