Iguana Facts – What Should You Feed Your Pet?

An iguana is a really good pet to have, so long as you know how to look after it. There are many different iguana facts that you need to know in regards to food. I have tried to list most of them below, whilst pointing out any fiction along the way!

You need to know what food iguanas can and can’t handle. They have particular tastes and needs.

Common mistakes from iguana owners is to feed insects or animals to iguanas. This is not good for your iguana deliberately, they only do this without the knowledge, I.e. by accident. Iguanas are in fact herbivores and should be treated as such.

As with all pets, anything you give them needs to be healthy and clean. They do not need or eat junk food. Water is a must for an iguana and the water must be clean and fresh. If you give you iguana food and water that is not fresh you will be damaging it’s health and making it sick.

One of the iguana facts the people often don’t think about is that your pet knows how much food and water he wants. Don’t believe it when people say you don’t need to give it food and water everyday. Of course you do, he deserves the right to choose when to eat and when he does eat, he doesn’t want it to be days old! Through experience, you will figure out how much your iguana likes to eat. They cannot be overfed, they are smart and won’t eat if they aren’t hungry.

Iguanas need more water than they actually take in. One particular trick is to place some food, like kale, in his water bowl and gradually make it smaller and smaller every day when he comes looking for it. He will always be taking in more water and may eventually drink the water despite there being no lettuce in it!

Around half of an iguanas diet should include foods such as mustard greens, collards, dandelion and water cress. The other half should include nutritional vegetables such as green beans, peas, carrots and potatoes.

Please beware that any dairy foods such as eggs or mild are not to be fed to your iguana, the same as insects are not to be fed to them. If you truly love your iguana, and want to give it a happy, healthy life, you will commit to more research and speak to your vet about what exactly an iguana likes.