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Thread: Horned Lizard (Phrynosoma cornutum)

  1. #1
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    Default Horned Lizard (Phrynosoma cornutum)

    I received a new Texas Horned Lizard from someone who thought he would be better off with another keeper. I have the Repashy formic acid supplement for pinheads and such. But I am SOOO nervous about feeding this guy ants. Any thoughts on diet?

    Laura R (FL)
    1.0.0 Colombian Tegu
    1.4.0 Argentine B&W Tegu
    1.2.0 Red Tegu
    1.2.0 B/WxRed Tegu
    1.0.0 Green Ameiva (yet another teiid)
    7 other lizards
    1 little gator
    3 FL box turtle
    1 Sulcata tortoise
    16 snakes
    5 fuzzy pets
    4 little frogs
    a bunch of creepy bugs
    and a partridge in a pear tree

  2. #2
    Join Date
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    Default Re: Horned Lizard (Phrynosoma cornutum)

    Looks like a bearded dragon a lil

    from Samsung Galaxy S3

  3. #3
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    Mar 2012
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    I shall now commence crying in a corner, as you have gotten one of my favorite lizards EVER! Can never find them though...

    LUCKY!!!!

  4. #4
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    He's so cute! I won't tell you that I got him for free.
    Laura R (FL)
    1.0.0 Colombian Tegu
    1.4.0 Argentine B&W Tegu
    1.2.0 Red Tegu
    1.2.0 B/WxRed Tegu
    1.0.0 Green Ameiva (yet another teiid)
    7 other lizards
    1 little gator
    3 FL box turtle
    1 Sulcata tortoise
    16 snakes
    5 fuzzy pets
    4 little frogs
    a bunch of creepy bugs
    and a partridge in a pear tree

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Oct 2006
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    Central FL
    Posts
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    oops!

    just kidding
    Laura R (FL)
    1.0.0 Colombian Tegu
    1.4.0 Argentine B&W Tegu
    1.2.0 Red Tegu
    1.2.0 B/WxRed Tegu
    1.0.0 Green Ameiva (yet another teiid)
    7 other lizards
    1 little gator
    3 FL box turtle
    1 Sulcata tortoise
    16 snakes
    5 fuzzy pets
    4 little frogs
    a bunch of creepy bugs
    and a partridge in a pear tree

  6. #6
    Join Date
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    Ah, Phrynosoma....one of my all time favourite lizard genuses. Although I'm not so certain that's P. cornutum, it looks like it might actually be P. platyrhinos. Any chance you could post a focused head shot from directly above?

    I'll pass on some of my experiences:
    If you can collect ants locally and feed them to your horned lizard, go for it (with the standard, obvious warnings). I strongly advise NOT buying them from online dealers. Admittedly I only have one experience with such, but it was such a dousy that it left a very negative impression. I have kept some Phrynosoma rather successfully (never bred them unfortunately) and never offered them much in the way of ants, mainly because in Canada we have immense issues with importing insects and the appropriate ants aren't always locally available. However, after chatting with others online they had said they had successfully shipped some in from one prominent wholesaler in the states. Figured I'd give it a try. Ordered a fair bit, thinking I'd try to keep them over the winter as a supplement for my Phrynosoma. Several months passed before they arrived, when they did they were chilled (winter was starting to set in) but looked generally ok, all alive. Not wanting to take the chance that they were all going to die fast, I fed a bunch to my Phrynosoma colony (who readily gobbled up a lot) and a few to the Tropidurus I had brought back from Brasil with me. All ate a few except my one female Tropidurus. Next morning I got up to do my morning rituals with the reptiles only to find my entire Phrynosoma colony dead and all the Tropidurus (except the female who refused to touch the ants) paralyzed and having neurological spasms. I quickly fired off an email to the ant supplier telling them what had happened, in a very neutral tone, saying I wasn't mad but wanted to warn them that perhaps where they were collecting ants was contaminated. Never got an apology or response of any kind.

    Aside from occassionally rounding up wild ants for my Phrynosoma, I had tried supplementing their diet with formic acid, both by spritzing other insects with a solution, and by directly spraying the lizards with a 1% formic acid solution. In either case it was very apparent the lizards were really unhappy with it. I'm not sold on it being necessary for their health. They have the adaptation of dealing with formic acid, I'm not certain it is true that they NEED it in their diet to be healthy.

    For food, the outstanding staple of their diet that I used was pinhead crickets and lots and lots and lots of wax moth larvae. A lot of people like saying wax moth are unhealthy and too fatty as staple items, but I've been in circumstances where I've had nothing but wax moth larvae to use (Brasil for instance - no cricket industry but my friend was researching with wax moth so I had an endless free supply...), and have kept (and bred) lizards almost exclusively with them, never with any ill effects (yet have definitely had issues with the standard practice of supplemented cricket diets). My thinking is this (and the caveat here is this is just my opinion, no real hard data behind it other than personal anecdotes) - most lizards that consume exclusively small insect diets usually are both A) MASSIVE consumers (they have to intake immense amounts to meet their needs) and B) tend to be smaller and with higher metabolisms. It's my opinion then that what they need is a calorie dense diet, high energy. Hence why I think I've had such good success with wax moth larvae and Phrynosoma.

    Don't know if it's still available, but years ago I found a little book I found great for this genus. It isn't a pet keepers book, but still full of much valuable information:
    Introduction to Horned Lizards of North America. Wade C. Sherbrooke, 2003. California Natural History Guides No.64. University of California Press, Berkely and Los Angeles, California.

  7. #7
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    Oh, and one other warning. These guys love loose substrates. Sandy or otherwise. Aside from the ant massacre of 2007, ALL other deaths of Phrynosoma in my care, and I do mean ALL, have been due to them digging under large rocks or such in their enclosures, the object shifting and then pinning the lizard underneath. If you are going to use heavy objects (ie. heavier than the lizard) in your enclosures, attach support legs to them (that are buried in the depth of the substrate) so that the Phrynosoma can still burrow underneath them, but the object won't then settle on them. I am embarrassed to admit I lost a number of Phrynosoma this way before I finally came up with the support leg idea.

  8. #8
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    Thanks, tupinambis. I remembered that you had kept them before and searched for your thread from years back. I was thinking of either not using rocks at all or even trying light lava rocks. He's in a 30gal long with play sand and nothing else at the moment. He's about 3" long and I'm guessing male based on the wide tail base and what I think are hemipenes bulges.

    I think he's P. cornutum rather than P. platyrhinos because of the stripes from eye to mouth, dorsal line, and the longer horns in the middle of the crown. But I'm a novice to horned lizards.
    Laura R (FL)
    1.0.0 Colombian Tegu
    1.4.0 Argentine B&W Tegu
    1.2.0 Red Tegu
    1.2.0 B/WxRed Tegu
    1.0.0 Green Ameiva (yet another teiid)
    7 other lizards
    1 little gator
    3 FL box turtle
    1 Sulcata tortoise
    16 snakes
    5 fuzzy pets
    4 little frogs
    a bunch of creepy bugs
    and a partridge in a pear tree

  9. #9
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    Unfortunately, what you describe doesn't preclude it from being Phrynosoma platyrhinos, but there is a somewhat easy way to differentiate the two. If you look down on the head, going around the outer crown of the back of the head, there will be 8 horns on the back margin (getting smaller as you move towards the front of the head), 4 on each side if it is P. platyrhinos. On P. cornutum there will 9 horns, same pattern (long at the back, short at the sides) with one small central one in the notch created by the two prominent horns on the back of the head. No little horn there, not P. cornutum. The other thing that makes me question the species is P. cornutum has two rows of very prominent fringe scales, quite spikey. The ones on your lizard in the photo looks like those of P. platyrhinos to me and appear to be only 1 row. Plus P. platyrhinos possesses spikey scales on the dorsal surface (definitely appear in the photo), while P. cornutum is known for having keeled scales on the ventral surface.

    I find the wide tail base an unreliable factor in Phrynosoma, but hemipenal bulges are a good sign. Males also have some enlarged, flat scales post-vent, and enlarged femoral pores.

    As for the decorations, trust me on this, if it's heavier than the lizard, give it firm support. I wasn't using big chunks of granite in my set ups, I was using rather small lace rock in most instances. If sand is supporting it, then it can become a deathtrap if it shifts.

  10. #10
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    Looks like P. platyrhino! It is difficult to count the horns because it appears to have two prominent horns and then a row of 5 smaller on the side of the head. But it has only one row of spikes.

    I have only one decoration in the enclosure. It is a heavy desert decoration, but I have it resting on the floor and barely enough sand to cover the floor around it. I might get nervous and replace it with a tumbleweed.
    Laura R (FL)
    1.0.0 Colombian Tegu
    1.4.0 Argentine B&W Tegu
    1.2.0 Red Tegu
    1.2.0 B/WxRed Tegu
    1.0.0 Green Ameiva (yet another teiid)
    7 other lizards
    1 little gator
    3 FL box turtle
    1 Sulcata tortoise
    16 snakes
    5 fuzzy pets
    4 little frogs
    a bunch of creepy bugs
    and a partridge in a pear tree

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