Feeding – The SDZ Diet
While we discussed in the section above that processed grocery store meat is frowned upon and is not a nutritionally complete package, we should also discuss the “SDZ Diet” here just to cover all bases. This diet was created by Jeff Lemm and nicknamed the “San Diego Zoo” diet by the pet trade. It was created to be a healthy monitor diet that could not only supplement a diet consisting of whole prey items, but also aid in feeding monitors in areas where the supply of feeders has not caught up with the exploding pet trade. The diet consists of:
10 lbs. lean ground turkey
90 grams steamed bone meal
2 ground Centrum tablets
This diet has been proven to be nutritionally complete and used to feed everything from Ackies to Komodo Dragons, with great results. A few things should be noted, however.
First, success has been found with this particular formula, in the format in which it is written above. Too often someone creates their own variation of the diet, has bad results, and then blames the diet or Jeff Lemm, when ingredients were substituted at random and the recipe not followed. Make sure to use exactly what is listed above. For example, when the diet says “Centrum tablets”, it means “Centrum tablets”. It does not mean eggs, calcium powder, Reptivite, or anything else.
Second, bone meal is a staple in the nutrition field, and can be found in health food stores or ordered from the Internet.
Lastly, I would strongly suggest using ground turkey that is lean, as the recipe calls for. Anything more fatty than lean, and you will be sorry when you have to clean it up coming out the other end of the animal.