New-ish keeper, adult female, eats five or six dubia every third day. She is tame enough that she walks onto my hand, and the only time I am reliably home is the evening, which is also when she eats.
So I keep ending up with a choice between handling her on a full stomach or not handling her at all that week. How long is the actual wait, and is this a real risk or one of those rules that gets repeated because it sounds careful?
Reframe the schedule and the problem goes away. Feed in the evening, leave her alone, then handle on the in-between evening when she has nothing in her. You are not losing handling time, you are moving it.
The other evenings to skip: during a shed when the skin is tender, the first week or two in a new home, and any evening she is tail-waving, hissing or legging it away from you. A gecko that does not want to be held tells you first.
Wash your hands before as well as after. Before is for her, after is for you.
Since you are new, the one that is not about timing: never hold her by the tail, and try not to grab from above either. They drop tails under stress and a hand coming down from overhead is what a bird looks like to something that small.
Scoop from underneath, sit on the floor so a jump is six inches rather than four feet, and keep the first sessions short. Mine dropped hers because I caught her as she bolted, and it grows back looking nothing like the original.
@probe_not_dial · last mo. · 3 replies
It is real, and the mechanism is worth knowing rather than the number. Squeeze or startle a gecko with a full stomach and she can bring the meal back up. Once is messy, repeatedly is a problem, and either way she did not get the food.
The second half matters more than people expect. She digests with borrowed heat, which is why she goes to the warm side after eating. Your hand is 20C-something and the room is cooler than her warm spot, so lifting her out mid-digestion is not just stress, it stops the process she went over there to do.
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@scoop_from_below · last mo.
So the wait is until she is off the warm side and moving about again, rather than a fixed number of hours?
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@probe_not_dial · last mo.
That is a better rule than any number I could give you. Feeding evening is hers, the next day is hers, and the day after that she is usually out and nosing around and happy to be picked up. For an adult on a three day cycle that gives you a handling day every cycle, which is plenty.
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