The Uromastyx Diet

Outline

The purpose of this document is to spell out the reasoning behind nutritional choices for Uromastyx. We also provide a comprehensive list of consumerist foods that accompany this information. This is not a full and finite list. We based these items off of availability and popular items which are easier to recognize.

Although it is always fun to find the obscure and rare item of food here and there weather it is a flower or vegetable, consistency is much more important.

Vegetation

Leafy Vegetation

The base diet for a Uromastyx is fresh and leafy green vegetables. We account this as approximately 80% of their base diet.

It should be noted; baby vegetables are a great route. Vegetables lose minerals and vitamins as they age and grow. Usually when we talk about baby vegetable we are referring to sprouted greens and new shoots. New vegetable growth is jam packed with minerals and vitamins, perfect for a growing animal.

Not only are they higher in nutrients, but Oxalates are also found in lower concentrations in baby plants when compared to adult plants per volume. If you are wondering what an oxalate is, I discuss it later in this section.

Comparatively, fully mature vegetation is extremely fibrous or dry, albeit lacking the potency of vitamins and minerals when diminish with a plants age.

Do Not feed spinach, parsley, chard or broccoli. They contain a high amount of oxalic acid.

For Example:

Endive
Escarole
Dandelion greens
Shredded or cubed cactus pads
Baby kale**
Red leaf
Green leaf
Arugula
Chicory leaf
Mustard greens
Turnip greens
Radish greens
Romaine (in moderation)
Grape leaves
Hibiscus leaves

Sprouted seeds

Root Vegetation

Root vegetables when shredded, will add variety into their diet. Usually, I feel these out two to three times a week in addition to leafy vegetables. These root vegetables are extremely filling and a great way to put weight onto you animal. It should be noted, most of the plants attached to these root vegetables are also edible and should be offered due to the overall variety of nutrition available.

For Example:

Yellow squash

Banana squash

Zucchini

Yams

Sun burst squash

Acorn squash

Hubbard squash

Fibrous Vegetation

Fibrous food and dry grasses are a great additive to a Uromastyx diet. Not only is fiber great for their digestive tract, but it is also a great bedding and way to bind up loose stool especially if there is any type of health concern.

For certain species of Uromastyx, dry grasses and hays are essential for the health and digestive tract of the Uromastyx. For example, Egyptian Uromastyx, adult Mali Uromastyx, adult Banded Uromastyx, and Moroccan Uromastyx have been seen specifically eating dry grasses even when fresh greens are present.

This is less common with other species like Ornate Uromastyx and Yemenensis Uromastyx (among others not listed). For these, I only see them eat fibrous greens if I am caring for a new import or a newly introduced animal to our farm. There is a window of stabilization where they eat these dry grasses, and then they will stop.

For Example:

Timothy hay

Bermuda grass

Edible and Organic Weeds

Seeds and Legumes

Grain and seed are a great dry (or soaked) addition. I personally keep them available 24/7 in a separate and dry bowl near their food plates. If the legumes become damp for any reason, they can be prone to mold growth which is toxic for Uromastyx.

Be cognizant of the type and quality of seeds or Legumes you feed.

For example, seeds with Husks cannot be digested. The Husk is pure fiber. If the animal is larger, like a full grown Egyptian, the husk statistically wouldn’t have as much of an effect on the animal. But if the Uromastyx is smaller, then the husk, which is fibrous, rigid, and sometimes sharp would have a very hard time passing through the digestive tract.

Take a sunflower seed, if a Uromastyx with their strong jaw cracks it and eats it, he will still eat the seed and husk together. The Husk can cause microscopic tears to the lining of their digestive tract as it travels through their body. I have seen two things happen from this, the husk lodges in their tract, causing impaction. The other is the introduction of an infection to their intestines from the mico-cuts.

Some signs and symptoms of these issues are blood in the stool, swelling to the stomach while they continue to lose weight, lethargy, dehydration, and even death.

Please take your animal to an experienced reptile veterinarian specializing Uromastyx.

These are the Seeds and Legumes I have used and had experience with. Orange lentils and millet are probably our animals top two favorite from the following list.

For Example:

Red lentils
Yellow lentils
split peas
millet

quinoa

Flowers

There are a variety of flowers that are non-toxic. You must be aware of the source of your flowers. Food-grade flowers are hard to find, but if you have the available, they are extremely enriching for your animals. They must be non-fertilized and fully organic. Runoff from contaminated water can leach pesticides into the flowers and other toxins which will cause sickness or death in your lizard.

If you have both space and time, home grown flowers and flowering plants are a great source of food for your animals. A majority of the flowers we feed out to Uromastyx are grown on our property inside of our tortoise cages.

Just know your sources.

For Example:

Dandelions
Hibiscus
Roses
Dendrobium Sp. of Orchid
Pansies
Carnations
Dahlia
Violets
Nasturtiums

Supplementation

Supplementation generally needs to be a calculation of the following:

Calcium (1.5% per serving) + Vitamin D3 (3,000 IU/KG)

For Example:

Repashy Grassland Grazers
Repashy Superveggie
Zoo Med Repti Calcium with D3
Mazuri tortoise pellets (soaked)

Miner-all

Fruit

Fruits are not a natural diet for Uromastyx.

Uromastyx Should Not eat fruit.

The concentration of sugar and vitamin C is directly related to how much of this food your reptile can eat. In higher concentrations of vitamin C and sugar, the less often you should feed them out. Some vegetable have a high concentration of sugar and vitamin C. Carrots and Bell Peppers are one of the most common which come to mind.

Sugar rich foods can be a problem for Uromastyx due to the fact they cannot process the sugar in fruits, and even some vegetables in high doses (like carrots) can cause diarrhea. Sugar provides an environment, which has been found to aid in the flourishing of parasitic cultures inside of the body. Since the Uromastyx body is not meant to process these high doses, it throws off the entire homeostasis.

It is not normal for a Uromastyx to have diarrhea. It is not normal for a uromastyx to be swollen and puffy with visible fat depletion in the tail and hip area. These show signs the Uromastyx homeostasis is thrown off.

The big issue with diarrhea really stems from one thing. Diarrhea causes dehydration. The compound fructose (a common type of vegetable sugar) pulls water to the gut to flush the system. Diarrhea also interferes with the absorption of nutrients from food in your animal’s gut.

Desert and arid reptiles tend to have strictly flowering leafy plants and dry grasses available.

Protein

An outdated ideology is Uromastyx need a protein source from animal matter like insects. This is a belief from the late 1990’s and early 2000’s when there were only a handful of studies which showed actual animals eating insects in the wild. The most harmful part of this is they use these studies as a blanket ideology for every species of Uromastyx. This thought process is very harmful due to the vast variety of sizes, locals, and species of Uromastyx there actually is.

The following species have been documented eating insect matter in the wild:

Uromastyx aegyptius microlepis
Uromastyx acanthinurus

These studies showed consumption less than 6% of their diet and as low as 1%. They sampled both live and dead specimen. They collected fecal samples and/or biopsied stomachs. This documentation or its rarity should be classified as the outlier. Some of the studies stated the small percentage located may be more indicative of accidental ingestion rather than purposeful.

Uromastyx are more likely to eat a plant which has an insect on it accidently.

In addition, older documentation of acanthinura now have been re-classified as Uromastyx dispar (2001) and Uromastyx nigriventris (2009), so when talking about insect consumption in Uromastyx there is a grace period of including all three groups.

Occasionally, in the wild, Uromastyx can find a plethora of insects available. As their territory dries out, as grass and shrubs die out, the vegetable matter in the area becomes more fibrous and sparser. Insects can sometimes be the only source of nutritional value because nothing else is available. When I use occasional feeding in this instance, I would never suggest more than once a year. What I would define as over feeding these complex protein’s is once a month to once a week. That is both excessive and unnecessary.

Using terms such as “occasional” feeding when it comes to any species is not a correct or measurable amount of time, especially if people are coming here looking for knowledge. It is a very undefined word with no actual parameters to what is ‘occasional’.

We have seen plenty of keepers feeding Uromastyx (like the ornata, philbyi, yememensis, and ocellata) insect matter on a monthly rotation. These animals usually live between 12-15 years old. This is a very short life span if you’d ask me. These are animals which should be living to 25 years old, and here they are living half of that. Animals which pass prematurely and are taken to the vet are usually diagnosed with gout or fatty liver.

As a keeper we should be producing environments which are better for Uromastyx than what’s available in the wild. They should not worry about seasonal vegetation, droughts, and unavailable food sources.

Most recently documented is of the tongue ecology of Ornate Uromastyx. They found that the tongue shape and secretions aid them in manipulation and digestion of vegetation. In short, the entirety of the digestive system in Uromastyx are specifically fine-tuned to break down complex vegetable matter. If you have time, the Egyptian journal of experimental biology compared the digestive tract of the Uromastyx ornata with other strict insectivores to create those parallels. In this study they directly compared Scincus scincus to Uromastyx Ornata.

The counter question is always comparing the proteins in vegetables versus animal based proteins.

Vegetable proteins have not been linked to gout or fatty liver in Uromastyx like insects have. The direct inability to process these insect protein’s directly leads to a buildup of excess fats and Uric Acid. When observing the molecular structure of the protein, there is a large difference. The insect protein is complex and has a more complex chain to break down and metabolize.

Gout is a painful swelling of the joints specifically found from excess uric acid in the animal’s body. Uric Acid is a byproduct of animal-based protein like insects, cat or dog foot, egg and other supplements made from animal proteins on the market. These Uric Acids build up in the blood stream and then find their ways into muscle tissue, internal organs, and joints.

Alternatively, fatty liver has been found to be caused by both fruit consumption and animal protein consumption. The excessive fats from both sugars and animal protein’s build up along the liver and impairs its functions. This can be extremely hard to diagnose in living animals, which makes it all the worse to have and treat before it leads to the animal passing prematurely.

Overall, for both of these, you will observe lameness in the animal, excessive swelling, lack of mobility, and ultimately a shortened lifespan due to these quality of life issues.

Feeding Schedules & Brumation Considerations

Feeding should replicate the animal’s natural ecosystem. Feeding should be done daily. In the wild, Uromastyx have the availability of food daily and are classified as a grazing animal. This means, while they have an active photoperiod, they will eat any time throughout the day, for the entire day.

By photoperiod, I should point out the differences between indoor photoperiods (artificial) and outdoor photoperiods (natural).

Indoor enclosures have sudden exposure to heat and light because everything is changed with a switch or timer artificially.

Naturally, the sun gradually heats up an area, or an area gradually cools off after the sun recedes.

The difference is, outdoors, animals have natural queue’s, which tell them to stop eating and go to bed. The air pressure, air temperature, surface temperature, and light are the main tells. Air composition and wind possibly help too. Indoors, they do not have these queues, which tell them to stop eating.

What happens then is that your animal will continue to eat until lights out. If your enclosures environment is too cold for the species, then the enclosure suddenly drops in temperature and your Uromastyx is left with a belly full of vegetation.

Remember, reptiles are cold blooded; they need outside sources of heat to digest food. If the food sits, the food will build gas as it ferments and begin to decay in the belly. If you add in an attempt at brumation, the animal, which had consistent and regular exposure to heat lamps without any natural cues to brumation will eventually become very sick due to the food sitting in their belly and fermenting.

Reptiles as a whole do not have the same internal mechanisms that we have to throw up. Some have diaphragms, some don’t. Some have epiglottis’, others do not. If the food begins to rot, there is no way for your animal to express the mass of decaying food, and therefore must keep it in its belly until they are warmed up and can begin the digestive process. If this happens once on accident (i.e. one night or 24 hour period), your animal is unlikely to have severe consequences for the undigested food. The bulk of vegetarian food is carbohydrates, which are easily processed under heat lights. There are small amounts of vegetable proteins which are easier to digest for Uromastyx due to the simplicity of their protein chains, especially if compared to protein chains on meat and insect matter.

Over a prolonged period of time (like brumation), undigested food will cause serious harm. In these instances, the digestive tract reactivates after the food begins to rot. The build up of gasses and decay will slowly begin to seep out of their mouth due to gut pressure and bloat. The likelihood of your animal breathing in these fluids are very high, and this is the main cause of a respiratory infection seen in captivity.

It may also cause other infections throughout the digestive tract, lethargy, and poisoning.

Know the specifics of your animal’s optimal hot area and optimal cool area, and their need and ability to brumate or not brumate.

Oxalates

In recent years this term and compound has become a hot topic in the reptile keeping community.

Reptiles produce Oxalates. Vegetables contain the compound Oxalic Acid which metabolizes into Oxalates. Vitamin C can metabolize into Oxalates.

Oxalate compounds bind to minerals, mainly iron and calcium, throughout the urinary tract system. For some animals, they can simply expel this build-up of CaOx or FeOx naturally in their urine. Other individuals end up with health issues, stones forming in the kidney and bladder. Currently, stressful and invasive surgery is the only remedy for these Oxalate stones.

Other issues also arise. Minerals bind to Oxalates; in healthy situations, this is a way of clearing excess minerals from the body. Mineral are important for the functioning body, but when the homeostasis is off and there is an overabundance of one and not the other, they can be pulled from the digestive tract prematurely in order to bond to Oxalates. Therefore, leaving the animal in a mineral depletion which can cause bone and muscle issues in development.

There has been correlation to supersaturation of water counteracting this absorption of minerals from Oxalates in the digestive system, a way of healthily flushing the animal’s system of excess oxalates. This means dehydration makes your animal more likely to form Oxalate Stones.

It must be noted that in a study published by Creighton University, Omaha, Oxalates more likely bond to the minerals of the plant matter it comes from. In the study, absorption rates of calcium were recorded for spinach and milk. Milk naturally does not have Oxalates, Spinach does. The calcium in milk was found to have not been affected by the Oxalates found in Spinach. Although Uromastyx don’t drink milk, it is still a good notation about their relation and parameters.

Goitrogens

Goitrogen rich foods are believed to have an effect on thyroid hormone levels, thus disrupting iodine uptake in the thyroid gland. This is thought to be the cause of Goiters, the enlargement of a thyroid gland that can be painful and uncomfortable. Symptoms would look like uneven swelling to part or all of the neck area, unbalanced fat storage, lethargy, and weakened muscles.

And yes, Goiters have been found in Uromastyx.

There are many reasons for the thyroid gland to become enlarged. Diffused enlargement occurs when the entirety of a gland is affected, while solitary enlargement only effects part of the gland. These two distinctions can have different causes and treatments so understanding the difference is important. Solitary enlargement can be caused by a variety of reasons, cysts and nodes for example. Diffused enlargement usually presents itself because of goiters from thyroiditis (inflammation). Comparatively, the autoimmune thyroiditis is distinguished as a painless swelling of the thyroid that changes shape and size over time.

Goiters are the thick tissue growth of the thyroid that does not change shape or size and is caused by the gland’s overstimulation of two certain hormones (TSH and HCG). When studied, the most popular causes of goiters were not from iodine deficiencies or goitrogenic foods. Current clinical and scientific literature pinpoints autoimmune diseases as the main culprit. A goiter due to iodine deficiency is actually rare in comparison.

Although it can be an issue, hysteria and complete diss-allowment of goitrogenic foods seems extreme. We always air on the side of caution. Be aware of your reptiles for any lumps. Limit the volume of foods that have goitrogens in them. Food which may contain moderate levels of goitrogens can also be beneficial by providing key minerals and vitamins. This is why it can be dangerous to completely cut them out of a diet for a healthy reptile, because variety and well-rounded diets are always the best option.

Calcium : Phosphate

The Calcium to Phosphate ratio is an important calculation to know and understand because these two compounds bond together in the digestive system. Optimally, you are looking for a Ca:P of 2:1. What this means is that for every two parts Calcium, there is one Phosphate to bond to. When foods are heavy in Phosphate, it pulls out calcium in the body until the Phosphate reaches the 2:1 ratio.

Phosphate rich foods and phosphate rich bodies will lead to a variety of issues long term like metabolic bone disease and malnutrition.

Calcium deficiencies and stones are the largest issue.

SHOP