Quality isn't everything

A woman just phoned me to ask what she should do about her iguana “Iggy”. She acquired Iggy a few months ago from a friend who told her just to feed him Chinese morning glory (“pak boong”). A kind, animal-loving person, she took feeding a step further, raising her own pak boong in her garden.

As in his former home, Iggy lives on top of the fridge, coming down to eat when he feels like it.

He isn’t doing very well, though. He has diarrhoea, he’s losing weight, and his appetite is poor.

I’m no iguana expert, but I’d guess that you should educate yourself before you adopt an animal, especially one, like an iguana with specific food requirements. The Internet has plenty of reliable sites, such as www.GreenIgSociety.org.

The first thing these sites tell you is that you have to constantly update any information you have on iguanas. What people once considered true about the animals’ care and feeding has now been found to be untrue.

For instance, people once thought that you could feed an iguana dog food or cat food. Today, we know that iguanas don’t eat animal protein, which is, in fact, bad for them. It can even kill them.

Iguanas do need a wide range of vegetables and fruits – and these must be chosen carefully. Not all fruits and vegetables are good for them.

I try to explain to the woman that while her pak boong may be top quality, it isn’t enough to meet the animal’s nutritional requirements. I also offer to send her information I have.

She’s upset, though. “My pak boong is the best quality in Bangkok,” she insists. She hangs up on me before I can tell her about an iguana’s lighting requirements, which also affect its metabolism. Ordinary inside light is just not sufficient.

If you give your iguana packaged iguana food, I think you’d still need to supplement it. Even for my turtles, I don’t use the turtle pellets that are widely available in Bangkok. No matter the brand, the package label always says, “Suitable for all turtles,” but I know that one kind of food cannot meet the requirements of all turtle species. Different species have different requirements.

“But the pellets I use are a high-quality brand,” the owner of one turtle insists. They may be high quality, but I’ve checked on the Internet. I know that these pellets don’t give his species of turtle everything it needs.

Besides, do you think a package that’s been on a shelf for months still contains all the goodness it had when it was first manufactured? Whether or not the package has been opened, additives, minerals and vitamins, like Vitamin C, degrade over time.

Whether you feed your dog or cat wet or dry food, I’d say the same thing. Check the manufacturer’s label and use-by date.

I don’t trust frozen dog food very much, use-by date or not. For me, it’s low quality. There’s not much meat in the package but lots of left-over parts of the cow or pig that aren’t sold for human consumption. Besides, even frozen food degrades over time.

If you still feel that frozen dog food is a good quality, at least thaw and then wash the contents thoroughly. That stuff has never been cleaned. The suppliers simply take it from the abattoir and put it into bags, providing you with a product that’s full of dirt and waste, not the sorts of additives you should feed your dog.

Quality is important, whether it’s pak boong or dog food. So is matching the food you feed your animal to its requirements. So is hygiene.