Feeding the feeder insects...

**Jamie** · #1 01-16-2006, 03:54 PM

This is what I've been giving the crickets and mealworms, is this ok?

Firstly I have a dish of calcium in Spirits enclosure. I also dust the crickiets.

I give the mealies an apple slice and a baby food meat stick (small piece). The crickets I usually give them an apple slice, a bit of babyfood fruit (peaches or banana) and a baby food meat stick (chicken) and they have a water pouch in their little enclosure.

Should that be balanced enough nutrition?

**Dee** · #2 01-16-2006, 04:29 PM

OMG Jamie, your kids are beautiful! They look so cute in the matching jammies.

Man I love it when someone asks a question that gets me researching! A friend recommended an article, so I'll quote a few items here and post a link to the article itself. It's intended for chameleons, but it seems pretty universal.

"Alfalfa is an easily digestible source of protein, B-complex vitamins, calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, iron and potassium and is another safe choice for providing protein." This is one that I didn't know about myself, but you can get blocks of alfalfa at WalMart around here. We get it for our rabbit -- now I can drop some in the cricket bin as well!

"Complex carbohydrates are found in fruits, vegetables, and grains." Plus, your fruits and veggies are a moisture source for the feeders.

"Vegetables such as romaine, squash, sweet potato and carrot are readily accepted along with fruits such as apples, oranges and even watermelon rind." Kale is also supposed to be a good one, and we use carrots on a regular basis for our crickets.

We've also used flake fish food and chicken feed for our mealies; both are supposed to be great gutloads.

Hope this helps you out, it taught me a few extras too!

http://www.chameleonnews.com./gutload.html

**Bitis Gabonica** · #3 01-16-2006, 04:42 PM

We tend to feed our live food a variety of veg - they come with pro-grub (a bran type feed provided by the company we buy them from) and we add various foods, usually comprising of butternut squash and fresh/spring greens, sometimes carrot, fruits and so on.. basically whatever veg we have in for the lizards we feed to the crickets. The greens and squash are particularly good for calcium. We go by the theory that if it is good for our lizards then the crickets will be well gutloaded with it - afterall, whatever they eat, the lizards eat.

**Jamie** · #4 01-16-2006, 04:49 PM

Thanks Dee! I have a thing for matching christmas jammies!

Alfalfa! Why didn't I think of that! I take alfalfa myself for it's vitamin properties! I particularly take it during my pregnancies as well to help my iron and vitamin K levels. And I DO have some for our gerbils right now too.

**mshrmheadcharge** · #5 01-17-2006, 05:37 AM

your kids are adorable!!! For crix food I use harrisons organic bird food

Fran · #6 01-17-2006, 08:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jamie

Thanks Dee! I have a thing for matching christmas jammies!

lol. That was one thing That I disliked about christmas. Imagine 6 boys in matching jammies. And being a youngster on a farm during WWll most of our clothes were home made from cloth feed sacks.

As for the feeder feed.... The crickets arrive with potatoe enclosed so we continue with fresh potatoe halves and add the fruit and veggies that the Bearded Dragons and iggys don't finish. For their water there is a bowl of play sand saturated with about an 1/8th" of bottled water above the sand. The dumb little crickets would get in and drown otherwise. Then when fed to the Bearded Dragons and AFTs the crix are dusted with calcium and vitamin.

**Jamie** · #7 01-17-2006, 09:50 AM

Thanks all! And I apologize for not putting this in the correct forum. Whoops. I still haven't investigated all the baords this great site has to offer.

**Rich** · #8 01-17-2006, 10:39 AM

Hello,

I feed my mealies a variety of things. Their substrate is made of baby cereal, oatmeal, and cornmeal. I offer their moisture with carrots or potatoe slices. I also offer them the thick stalks from the collards, which they seem to like as well.

When I buy crickets, I give them some "salad". Whatever we make for the dragons is what they end up getting. Since I have 4 dragons, we normally make one big dish of food and just go around filling everyones dishes. Whatever "extra" we have is tossed in with the crickets.

Superworms get the same diet as the mealies in my house. lol

**SurvivorSteph** · #9 01-17-2006, 11:23 PM

This thread is very timely for me; I just made up a batch of Rich's Superworm Substrate and was wondering about hydrating them. I noticed that the supers would gobble up the Bearded Dragons' squash when added to their plates. I misread the feeder article and thought he meant just to give carrot slices to the beetles.

Silly me. I'll be adding some moist veggies for them in the morning.


Everything Above Disappears When You log In Or Register!

Direct Navigation
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267