Begging, begging, and more begging.

[pepper]

Okay, so Watson the baby Tiger Salamander is begging like crazy, every time I walk into the room he's jumping into the air and going crazy for food..and I don't know if he's just, well being a pig, or if he really is hungry!

I usually feed him 6-10 small to medium size crickets a day, maybe the biggest being 1/2 inch.

Do you think he's just being a greedy baby?

Or he really is truly hungry?

 

[Greatwtehunter]

In my experience tigers tend to be gluttons. As long as he is maintaining weight I wouldn't worry about his begging and just keep him on his normal feeding schedule. You could probably even reduce the number of times a week your feeding him.

 

[John]

They are gluttons, definitely. I have found that you can train them to associate feeding time with tapping on their container. I tap quite a few times on the side of the vivarium (strongly enough that they are surely feeling the vibrations) and then I feed them. I've found that after doing this for a few months they are much less likely to spend 20 minutes climbing the side of the vivarium after I walk by!

 

[John]

I should add that now when I tap they all scurry out of their burrows/unbury themselves because they know what the tapping means.

 

[pepper]

I did do the tapping thing, but now he's out ALL the time, he barely even buries himself anymore, he just...waits.

Like I few him last night, and when I woke up this morning..he was in basically the same spot.

 

[John]

He's found the good life.

 

[keithp]

I used to have a Spotted Salamander, and yup they are pigs like the tiger salamander. They will beg and eat and eat and eat. You cant overfeed them cause they are the type that will eat as much as you put in.

 

[Daniel]

You cant overfeed them cause they are the type that will eat as much as you put in.

Overfeeding does not mean to feed them more than they can take (what is nearly impossible since they don't have a feeling for what "sated" is). It means to feed them more calories than they need to survive and steadily grow (so to say - to feed them enough to become obese).

 

[fignewton]

I agree, over feeding doesn't have to mean giving them too much to eat where they get sick (although once my tiger did puke a worm out after eating too many...) if you feed them pinky mice too often they can get SO fat. Oh my goodness, there was a picture floating around online of one fed too many pinkies and it was just a blob.

My tiger, Marly, used to beg every time I walked by his tank. I've had him a few months now, have been feeding him nightcrawlers (he used to get red wigglers, which are MUCH smaller.) He will down a night crawler and usually not ask for food again for several days.
However... I think we're going back to the red wigglers, or something smaller because feeding him those massive night crawlers makes me sick to my stomach. He can pound those things down, but it's disgusting (as soon as he bites them, they start excreteing this white slim... omg...) Anyways, unless he starts getting overweight, or looking too plump, I wouldn't worry too much. I'm assuming he's not full grown? I don't know about anyone else, but when Marly begs I feel SO bad if I don't feed him. I was out of worms for several days, and he begged every night. I had to cover his tank cause looking at him begging made me feel so mean! That's how we ended up with nightcrawlers, because that's all I could find. Ughhh... so icky.

 

[keithp]

My bad, this was years ago when I was a kid so I thought feeding him to the point where he could barely move was bad.

Anyway, my salamander made a faint squeeky croaking noise as he begged, yes he made noise! It was amazing you never hear salamanders make noise if at all but he did it only when he begged. It almost sounded like when your cleaning a mirror and you get the squeaky clean noise.

 

[John]

Are you sure you had a tiger and not a Dicamptodon?

 

[keithp]

"Are you sure you had a tiger and not a Dicamptodon? "

Who me? If it was aimed at me no I had a Spotted Salamander. You know blackish with bright yellow spots.

 

[John]

Ah sorry. That'll teach me for not reading threads.