Ground turkey?

[norman]

Just wondering what everyones opinion on feeding savannahs ground turkey is...and should it be cooked?
thanks
pete

[asphyxia]

Hey Pete,

I have been trying to get that answer for some time fella
nothing definative yet, but for the mean time I am feeding my Albig mostly in order of crickets, superworms (both dusted), rat pinkies, rat fuzzies, mice.

Brian

[snakemann87]

hey, please dont take my information but i when i asked what people feed tegus and other monitors, most say rats and ground turkey, and i wouldnt think you would cook it if they would eat it raw in the wild????
-PLEASE IF IM WRONG CORRECT ME, THIS IS JUST TO CLARIFY IF MY INFORMATION I HAVE IS CORRECT.

[norman]

yeah i havent tried turkey yet, ive been sticking to dusted crickets,kingworms,and mouse fuzzies. But i have heard that ground turkey can be benificial (not from a well experienced keeper though), and i am pretty sure it is cheaper too (havent really looked into that yet.)
What else do you guys feed your savannahs? and in what portions/preperations (ie. 3 times a week, cooked in...)
thanks!
pete

[norman]

i have read that you should cook all "grocery store meats/eggs" because of the risk of salmonella and other harmfull bacteria. And i would think that the same thing goes for both humans and monitors.

[asphyxia]

For what its worth link has a discussion of the turkey diet...so far

http://www.ssnakess.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10447&perpage=15&pagenumber=2

B

[norman]

thanks brian.i think for now ill stay with the diet i have been using, i will probably try him on some turkey in the near future though.

[TK2]

Whole prey items - mice,rats are a more complete food if they are large enough to eat them. Dusted insects are a good second choice for hatchlings and smaller monitors.

[Ravi]

Hi All

There seems to be some confusion about the ground turkey "diet". I use the quotations because the word diet can be misleading.

This "diet" was developed in part by the San Diego Zoo. Jeff Lemm is the man to talk to about this since he was a big part of its conception.

I'll add what I know about it but please do your own research to make sure I havn't misrepresented their research.

1. Turkey diet is not served cooked. It is a raw food.
2. It was used heavily on thier white throats kept outdoors.
3. It contains ground turkey, bonemeal, and Centrum vitamin (check on the ratios)
4. It is supposed to have the same nutritional makeup as a mouse (or some thereabout fact).

I have used this myself but don't really like it. Maybe I didn't use it properly. I found that fecal matter became runny (as expected since there is no hair/exoskeleton). Its messy to feed indoors and it starts to smell much faster than a mouse left for the same time.

I'm a firm believer in whole prey but thought I'd give it a try just to see what it could do for my animals.

I don't think the finding have been published but there is a lot of information on it if you search various monitor forums.

Hope this helped.
--Ravi--