Diet Menu for Tokay Gecko

Diet Menu for Tokay Gecko

Gecko is a reptile that likes to eat insects. All kinds of insects. Typically, they hunt for food at night

Tokay geckoes are insectivorous.

For zoo diet

In captivity, they usually feed on mealworms, cockroaches, crickets, grasshoppers, pink mice, and locusts.

Your tokay geckos should thrive on on a diet of wax worms, meal worms, and crickets. Wax worms tend to be a little too fatty, so use them sparingly as a treat. But before that,you will want to dust the food items with a reptile multivitamin powder. The vitamins will lessen the chance of Metabolic Bone Disease, which is fairly common. Every respectable pet store carries multivitamins so it should be a readily available commodity.

To make sure all the food goes in and out without any type intestinal blockage it is a great idea to only offer food that is no larger than the width of your gecko's head. Also make sure to feed the crickets a nutritious cricket feed 24 hours or so prior to offering them to your tokays. I know its cliche, but you are what you eat! Lizards are no expection. :)

Hatchlings will need to be fed 1-2 times daily, and juveniles should be offered food once a day. You will only need to feed adults around 5 times a week. Some people like to offer their adults a pinkie mouse monthly as a special treat, but I personally don't do this. It doesn't bother me to feed mice. I just don't see how it could benefit their health.

Proper tokay gecko care requires that you remove any crickets that have not been eaten after 10 minutes or so. They can stress your lizard out if he is not hungry by crawling all over him. A lot of people don't know that crickets bite. They will try to nibble little chunks out of your reptiles!

Feed

     Tokays require a mixed diet. You can feed them crickets, mealworms, superworms, pinkie mice, cockroaches, and other insects. Adults should be fed 3-4 times a week while young are feed daily.

     A water bowl is not needed. Tokays require daily misting and a dripper. Remember when misting to use hot water. This is because the water cools very fast when coming out of the mister. Simply spray the plants and the gecko will drink the droplets.

Gutloading

     For keeping a healthy pet, it is also required to keep your food well gutloaded. This is because your herp gets all the food and nutrition form it's food. An if a cricket has an empty stomach then your gecko will be getting no nutrition.

     Crickets are basically an exoskeleton. They do not hold nutrition very well unless they have it in their stomach. This is way it is so important to provide you crickets with a well rounded diet. For the easy way, it is recommended to use poultry or chicken mash to feed to your crickets. Make sure that it does not contain any steroids or other growth hormones. You may also use cat food though it is not quite as nutritious. Their are also product's called cricket gutload or cricket feed. These are acceptable too. Not only should you provide a good source of dry food, but you should also provide a fresh veggies or fruits. This will complete a good diet to provide back to your herp. Also this will provide a good source of water for your crickets. Stay away though from using iceberg lettuce as this has very poor nutritional value. You may also purchase another product called cricket water. This provides an good source of water too. Or use a combination or the too. Do not use a water bowl as crickets are dumb and can drown in a drop of water. This also make's it to easy for bacteria and disease to spread as crickets will excrete their wastes everywhere.

     Mealworms are easier provided that you feed well gutloaded crickets as part of their diet. Simply provide a container with a rolled oats or wheat bran  for their food source and substrate. Five them also some sort of vegetable or fruit once a week.

     Potatoes, mustard greens, and dandelion greens are an excellent source of nutrition.  Potatoes, carets, and oranges provide a good source of nutrition with providing a great source of water. Please remember though to replace the fruits or vegetables every couple days as it will start to mold which can be harmful. Also when using dandelion greens, it advisable to get them from the supermarket or make sure that your lawn is not sprayed or have received overspray from the neighbors yard from any chemicals such as weed killers, pesticides, or fertilizers. They can be deadly for both your feed and herp.

Supplements

     Even with proper gutloading, it is still recommended that you supplement your herps food with vitamins and calcium. Providing these supplements is easy. The main way is simply adding a tiny bit of supplement to a baggy, add the food and shake a few times to lightly coat it. Their are also sprays, drops, and water drops. Dusting is the preferred way, unless needed to for health reasons.

     You will also need to provide a bowl with calcium. This allows them to be able to eat extra calcium when needed. I also add a tiny amount of vitamins mixed it with mine, but this is just something extra that I do.

     Dusting you their food is needed depending on the age, size and season of your geckos. Adults require dusting their food once a week with both calcium and vitamin powders. This generally provides the amounts they need without overdosing or becoming deficient. Use the Calcium with Vit.D3 on every other dusting with the adults as two much has been causing some debate as to Vit.D3 overdosing.

     For hatchlings, juveniles, and gravid females, it is recommended every other day to dust their prey. Please note, you will only want to use the calcium with vit.d3 once a week. Other then that use the regular calcium.

     Calcium is important in proper bone growth along with egg production in gravid females. Without the proper about of calcium, they will develop MBD. This will include signs of weakening of he animal, limbs not growing strait, mouth line uneven or not strait, and improper development of the jaw. Females need it when producing eggs. They will require high levels of it for strong eggs and to lay the eggs. Not enough calcium will cause soft and brittle shells along with the female becoming egg bound which can kill her. Even if you don't breed your female. She will still need extra calcium during the breeding season as she will still lay infertile eggs. MBD is one of the main killers of herps. 

Perhaps for those of you who maintain a tokay gecko, and wants them to grow big and fasts. Quick ways to make large gecko with some of them are fed regularly. Type of food can be dried shrimp, crickets and other. As a supplement for your gecko is to give  boiled eggs every day. One boiled egg in a day is enough. If you still have other remaining eggs you can use it to make an omelet or martabak. For you, of course.

How About Breeding Tokay Gecko

How About Breeding Tokay Gecko ?

This does not look like a bad idea, especially for those who like reptiles. Perhaps if asked, there would be variety of reasons for people to keep a gecko. From my experience, every gecko breeder who was asked, why do they cultivate geckos? Most of them will answer that it was solely for business. And there is no other reason.
For those of you who are interested to become a gecko-breeders, surely you must have a gecko that will be grown or maintained. Whether it's for the preservation or just as a pet. In southeast asia  region, may be easier to get your geckos than in the other continent. But, I think that's  probably not  a problem now, because the gecko itself has become a commodity of exports. In Indonesia, in my hometown of Malang, to find geckos still practically easy. We can buy it at stores that sell pet, or to save costs we can look at the forest and the settlements that are often heard the voices of geckos. I myself had find a gecko in one village near my house. At that time, I use pvc pipe which I cut 50 cm long. To trap it, I put the pipe on a tree where the gecko perched. I put pvc pipe with a vertical position and I also put a few crickets as bait. As a result, in less than 1 hour, the gecko begin crawling down towards the pipe, it is because the smell the crickets, after the geckos crawled in and it's busy eating crickets, I shut the pipe and I brought it home. Easy isn't it?
When I got home, I see my catch considerably big, perhaps weighing 1.5 ounces. Then I put the gecko into a wooden box which I have previously made. And for the food, I give 1 ounce of crickets per day, and I give coconut water to drink, this is for fast weight increasing. 

For most people probably having tokay gecko is only intended to achieve  benefit greatly by selling it. With the circulation of rumors and news this makes gecko price soared with a variety of reasons, these make people more interested in finding and maintaining these reptiles. And of course this makes their presence in nature declining. If geckos continue to be hunted and traded over time these animals will become rare and really have a very high price. For its rarety of course.