On Wednesday, May 29, 1996 at 3:00:00 AM UTC-4, Paul J Hollander wrote:
In article <Pine.SOL.3.91.960526094853.16233A-100000@boris.ucdavis.edu>, Melody Cefalo <ez050750@peseta.ucdavis.edu> wrote:
The best way to care for your new pet is to let him go where you found >him. Besides effecting a loss to the environment (the food chain and the >availability of different species for posterity), it is very likely that >the skink will never adjust to captivity and will die. If you want a pet >skink, buy it captive-bred from a breeder or good pet store. A broadheaded >skink is only about $15.
Please let him go!
But those pet store broad headed skinks are wild caught, too. Better to either stick with one personally caught or release it and *not* buy a
pet store skink.
AFAIK, broad headed skinks do fairly well in captivity, though I've
never kept any personally.
Paul Hollander pholland@iastate.edu
Behold the tortoise: he makes no progress unless he sticks his neck out.
i am going to have to disagree with everyone on the subject of "let him go" provided a good enough environment, ample food (the right kinds) and room to roam, i think the skink will be fine, so long as you keep it away from any outside contaminants from
here-on-out. broad head skinks eat just about anything and everything, and are omnivores, plenty of fruit and meal worms will do the trick. make sure he has a leaf bedding in his terrarium and some place to climb and bask. but yes, they bite and they do
HURT. if you have caught a grown one then try not to handle it, if you have caught a baby (which are more common)then it should be fine, when they have been raised in a stable captive environment they can be very docile and even affectionate any time
that is not mating season. i have raised one from a hatching and i caught him swimming in leaves. he grew up to about half a foot long before he died (i believe) of old age, i made a lot of mistakes trying to keep him and many of the ones before him i
caught died or almost died before i released them. so if you are not very experienced in handling reptiles then i suggest you let him go, otherwise i think you'll be a-okay.
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