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Posted by Ellie
on 7/24/2012, 1:14 pm
67.225.68.180
I rescued a 10 year old female green iguana a few weeks ago. She was kept with a male, had only a very small bowl of water, very low humidity, scars from fighting with the male and was only fed greens (rarely because the male would eat them all). She is fixed and quite small, only 2 feet including tail, the previous owner had only had her for about a year so who knows what happened to her before that.
I have experience with lots of other reptiles but never iguanas so I did a lot of reading and am trying to give her a good home. Her enclosure is 5'x6'x7', I know this is a little smaller than recommended but she is so tiny and it was all I could do at the time. She has perches at different levels of the cage with a basking spot at about 100 and the coolest spot is low 80's. There is a large cat litter tray that serves as her water bowl/bath and I give her food in bowls at the top and bottom of her enclosure. She also has a UV light and a silk tree and I mist the enclosure 3 times a day. I believe that her set-up is correct but please let me know if I am doing anything wrong.
She has never been handled so she is extremely scared of people. When I got her she was biting and tail whipping if I got close to her. I have basically been leaving her alone to settle in, just changing her water, spot cleaning and putting in food. I have also been sitting close to her enclosure in hopes that she will get used to my presence. I am not really concerned with socializing her, I realise that she is old enough that she will likely never be friendly, I would just like to be able to feed her and clean her cage without stressing her out every time. I just want to give her a good life. We are at work all day but whenever we are home she is either in her basking spot or hiding in her tree. I know that she goes to the bottom to bathe because she uses her water dish as a bathroom also (it gets cleaned everyday), we just never see her down there.
My main concern is that she is not eating as much as I think she should be. She gets a handful of mixed greens (red chard, green chard, spinach, mizuna, arugula, radicchio, romaine and frisee) split between her 2 bowls everyday and she will only eat about half of it, some days she doesn't touch it at all. I have tried giving her blueberries, bell peppers, acorn squash and raspberries and she don't touch them. I had originally assumed that she was settling in and her appetite would increase over time but it hasn't changed yet. Could she still be settling in? Am I doing something wrong? Any ideas of food that she will find irresistable that aren't bad for her? I worry about her intake but don't want to get her hooked on junk food.
Also, seeing a vet has to be an absolute last resort as the nearest reptile vet is a 5 hour drive away and I don't think that the stress of the trip would be at all good for her.
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