Brocoli in veggie mixes?

[tHeGiNo]

Hey there! Because this could fall under general lizard, beardies, leos, or food for thought forum, I thought I'd post it here :D I normally have a very good mix of vegetables which i feed to my lizards. This consists of kale, mustard greens, nappa, collards, just abuot every dark green along with a little bit of carrots. In this last batch of veggies i made up however, I added a tad of brocoli stems. Is this fine?

[eyespy]

Sure! Broccoli is one of those foods that isn't good as a staple but is fine when rotated in and out of a varied diet. It has some goitrogens in it which can contribute to thyroid disease if fed regularly so just work it in and out of your rotated foods to avoid that.

[Lisa]

We give our rodents frozen mixed veggies. they love them.

[tHeGiNo]

Thanks both of you for the replies. If it poses a risk, I think I will avoid brocoli all together. Right now I use collard greens, kale, dandelion, nappa, and a couple other dark greens along with a little bit of carrot.

[Tim and Julie B]

I have been looking for kale and it seems no one even knows what it looks like. What stores have you found it in?

[Burmies]

Last year I had a pair of iguanas and they had no problem with eatting brocoli. Actully they really had no problem eatting any kind of vegies. So ya I can not see why it would not be ok.

Burmies

[BWSmith]

Don't forget that Kale has a chemical in it that inhibits the obsorbtion of Calcium. I would use it sparingly. And make sure that Broccoli is chopped fine since it is a tough veggie. And I assume everyone knows and noone mentioned it, but I feel I have to say it: Iceburg Lettuce has NO nutritional value, it is crunchy water.

[ranmasatome]

Actually there are a lot of different veggies that have secondary compounds in them that inhibit the uptake of other nutrients... it would be important to consider what animal is eating this plant and etc. etc.etc..the whole nutrition thing....the pt. i am trying to make is that most of the time its not just accurate to look at one components and say whether it is "safe" for something to eat something else....
e.g. many plants contain their phosphorus in the form of phytic acid...which could bind to essential divalent minerals like Cu2+ and Zn2+ etc. etc...which then limits the amt. available for animal uptake...however if the animal has phytase (an enzyme), it would be capable of handling more phytic acid then one that does not. etc. etc. another example is tannin....i'm not going to expain that one...you can read up abt. it..hahaha...
i think what BW smith may be talking abt. is oxalic acid..apparenly the ratio of calcium to oxalic acid should NEVER be more than 1:2 otherwise...you can say good bye to your animal...these are all forms of digestion/absorption inhibitors in plants..and only represent a portion of defences plants have to prevent being eaten by animals..
gosh...nutrition...gotta love it...sorry if i am rambling on..hahaha i think brocoli is okay...but i just had an exam on nutrition and all this stuff is still fresh in my head..hahahaha...
hope it was informative at least.
i think kale is okay...but if you find that it contains oxalic acid then i wouldn't feed them that too often (as in a regular basis)...it can cause a secondary calcium deficiency.

[eyespy]

Kale gets a bad rap for oxalic acid that it doesn't really deserve. Many of the plants in the same family that have good reputations as reptiles stapes actually contain more oxalates, such as collard greens. Almost all leafy greens have oxalates in them but the ratio of how much oxalic acid vs. how much calcium is an important measure, more so than just what level of oxalates.

Carrots actually bind more calcium than some of the foods you often see in the warning lists because they don't contain enough calcium in themselves and are moderately high in oxalates and so will bind up calcium from other foods eaten at the same time, resulting in a net calcium loss. Kale contains considerably more calcium than oxalic acid so while your reptile won't get full use of all the calcium in it, there is no loss of calcium leached out of other foods.

The Philadelphia Zoo uses kale as a staple in their base salad mix for herbivorous and omnivorous reptiles and their bloodwork comes out with excellent Ca:P ratios.

http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/Data/Other/oxalic.html

[eyespy]

Originally posted by Burmies
Last year I had a pair of iguanas and they had no problem with eatting brocoli. Actully they really had no problem eatting any kind of vegies. So ya I can not see why it would not be ok.

Burmies

Did you get bloodwork levels drawn to see if they had problems? By the time a green ig shows external symptoms of calcium or thyroid problems the disease is already fairly well advanced. You can't just watch an animal eat something, notice no changes for the worst and assume the food is okay as a staple.

Last time I had PMS and was mad at my landlord I sat down and ate a pint of Ben & Jerry's. I seemed to do fine on that, would you recommend I do that several times weekly? :p

[J_Riley]

Here is another link listing calcium : phosphorus ratios of a bunch of common vegetables, if anyone is interested...

http://www.iwrc-online.org/rehab/calphos2.html

[marisa]

For my Green Iguana I just make sure she has what she must have first....i.e. collards, winter squashes, etc. as a staple...

As long as she eats her full portion of that, I give her treats of all kinds. Hasn't hurt her at all yet. but I am not giving treats out in the same amount of her staple food but Roxy gets borccoli once in a blue moon, a carrot once in a blue moon, wheat bread (ooohh boy watch out she loves it) a bite of my pizza crust, bananas, watermelon (which is water nothing else) and more....but just a bite here and there as a treat! :)

As long as you cover all the bases of nutrition, and your animal is a good eater of its staple foods, I feel giving something else as a treat is fine. :) (well nothing harmful!)

Marisa

["Red-eye"_Matt]

Try this link for information on the different veggies and how they should be used in a lizards diet. It was designed specifically for green iguanas but I have been told that it is fine to use as a guideline for feeding other lizards such as beardies.

Food Information Chart (http://www.greenigsociety.org/foodchart.htm)

Matt

[tHeGiNo]

So basically, what I would want to do is use veggies which calcium is more abundant then the phosphorus?

[J_Riley]

They ideal ratio is 2 : 1 in favor of Calcium...

Now, I know a little about nutrition, but not nearly as much as some of these smart people here.

People that are vegetarians have to make sure they match their beans etc in order to get complete protein into their system (for humans, a complete protein is one that contains all 23 amino acids). The only complete protein is the flesh of another mammal, so people that don't eat meat need to mix and match incomplete proteins so they aren't amino acid deficient.

The point of that paragraph is that this is probably a wise idea for an iguana diet, or any other herbivore, unless they are grazers like cows, whose guts contain bacteria to break down cellulose (plant material cell walls).

If any of that is wrong, someone correct me, it's been a long time since I took biochem or any of those courses...(gosh, next year it'll have been 10 years!)

[BWSmith]

I love it when I learn somehting :)

[Dozer]

I heard different of kale, i heard that the olaxic ( spelling ) is found in stuff like brocolli and spinach, whereas kale should be limited 'cause it contains mad amounts of calcium :| Maybe i'm wrong?