I have a female 1 year old leo. I hope to breed her in the future, but not quite yet. she seems a little on the chunky side, but her tail is just not quite larger than her head. I feel like she is overweight, but I either feed her too little or too much in my opinion. I am just wondering how much you guys normally feed yours or if I need to put her on a diet. I feel like I should but I also feel like I shouldn’t. What is your opinion? I feed her superworms, giant mealworms, rarely waxworms, and crickets as special treats. I dust them occasionally with the calcium-plus supplement, and parasite control powder. She currently weighs 82 grams. Thank you!
Edit: There are pictures in the comments ; ) Also she is nine inches long.
Okay, so, one of my Leo’s is that age and 83 grams actually. She might be SLIGHTLY overweight to some people, but she is perfectly healthy and I don’t view it as a huge problem. I feed her very little too, and she maintains the same weight. BUT it will be easier to tell if your Leo is overweight from a picture if you can include one! I feed my girls solely mealworms, about 3 times a week for the bigger geckos. Maybe try feeding twice a week or three times if you believe she is overweight? But, don’t do that if she isn’t, it could be unhealthy! It’ll be a lot easier to figure if she is obese from a picture!
The easiest way to tell if your Leo’s starting to get a bit chunky is to check under the armpits. Along with the tail, Leos store fat in the armpits and it will look like bubbles there.
Unless you are planning to breed her, this means your Leo can use a diet.
If they are going to be used for breeding, you still don’t want them too much heavier then when you notice that because they’ll be very prone to obesity if not already starting to become overweight by that point. But having that little bit of extra reserve can be really helpful if your girl has a long season.
As mentioned above though, a picture is worth 1000 words. Maybe a photo of her next to a ruler so we can see about how large she is? That will help.
Thank you so much for your info! I do feed her Mondays and Fridays. I can probably add a pic to help you. She does have armpit bubbles, but sometimes they go away. Her belly is probably a little bigger than I want it to be, but I might just be paranoid because I had an old gecko a year ago that I got from a friend nine months before that had parasites and a bunch of other problems. The vet said to feed her by syringe, but he gave us the wrong amount to feed her, because she was too small. her belly got REALLY fat, then she passed. I am just being really careful with the one I have now.
Extra minerals/vitamins can show as fluctuating armpit bubbles too, so if her weight is on track you may need to re-evaluate the amount of vitamin dusting you are doing, etc. Again, not a huge concern, but I use my leo’s armpit bubbles to change how many times a month he gets dusted food
Anyway, first off, I wanna say…she is a CUTIE! Reminds me of my Cleopatra (I’ll include a pic) but…I do think she is pretty chonky. But she is a beauty!! That’s one of the prettiest I’ve seen actually. The pic was taken the day after I got her a few years ago! She was a chonk too
I do think she could stand to lose a bit of weight, or at least not gain any more. What are you currently feeding her? Maybe switching to a lower fat content insect might help
Thanks! I’ll probably feed her once a week for a week or so until she loses just a little bit. I agree with you that she is probably a little bigger than she needs to be! Is there any other concerns that you would like to share about her? I would love to know!
Yeah, I agree she can loose a bit of weight. I like my girls to be a little smaller than that when breeding.
That’s usually about how mine would look around the time they would drop 2 eggs.
If she’s big on begging, you could just offer her less prey items for her meals instead of cutting the days back. At least depending on the type and number.
