Spike's Health - PLEASE READ
Greetings - Thanks so much for rescuing this awesome animal! Spike is very beautiful but I am concerned for his heath and thought you might like to know the truth.
You mentioned in the description that Spike likes to eat 'live food' and insects. These, or ANY animal protein including cat or dog food, cheese, bugs, worms, crickets, or meat (cooked or raw) are very yummy to your iguana, but will shorten his life by as much as 15 years. Iguanas fed these items rarely live for 5-8 years, let alone their predicted 20 year life span. PLEASE STOP FEEDING Spike INSECTS.
This is very important information for you because the symptoms of metabolic bone disease are already visible in spike's photo. Those fat little legs are NOT HEALTHY, they are packed with unprocessed animal protien that his body cannot handle. All that protien won't allow his calcium to go to his bones, and it also is very drastically hurting his liver and kidneys.
Please read this page about MBD and be prepared to see some photos of small iguanas like yours in various stages of the disease.
http://www.iguanaden.com/health/mbd.htm
If you want your sweet little spike to live a healthy life, you need to change his diet now! Please read the information about diet:
http://www.anapsid.org/iguana/animalprotein.html
http://www.anapsid.org/iguana/igdiet.html
You need to take action immediately to stop Spike's MBD before it causes him more serious health problems or eventual painful death. Make sure you're using the proper UVB lighting in his enclosure. Without it, he can't process his calcium. It'll help his MBD get better too, combined with the proper diet. Read this:
http://www.iguanaden.com/care/uvb.htm
Above all, I can't stress enough how quickly your iguana's health will improve once you rid his diet of the insects and other animal protien containing foods. He may go on a 'hunger strike' when offered greens instead and may refuse to eat for up to 2 weeks, but he WILL EAT when he gets hungry enough, and when he does eat, he'll love it.
I hope you'll continue to take good care of your new friend - I have an iguana about one year old too - and please read up on care for him. A great diet consists of greens like collard, escarole, endive, dandelion or mustard green (but not lettuce or spinach) and about 20 percent other veggies like green beans, peas, asparagas, parsnip. Give him fruits like melon or banana as a treat instead of bugs, and he'll love it!
I am from northern minnesota originally (crookston), and I know it can be hard to find a varying diet there. Growing your own veggies might be an option for you too, but if you check around, you can at least find one or more of the recommended greens to help him out.
I hope you'll do some research on iguana care at these great sites:
www.iguanaden.com
www.anapsid.org
www.greenigsociety.org
and a great community is the IguanaDen yahoo group at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/iguanaden/
Thanks for listening!
Adrienne
http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~anelson5
