At the risk of being bashed by the Horned Lizards Forum Gods...here's my two cents.

Let’s assume your DHL’s are wild caught. If so, then clearly an ant diet is best. Ants will be what they are used to, ants will be less stressful for them to have in the cage, and ants will be the best prey for their already established digestive systems.

If you must go with another insect, then crickets are what I recommend. For this protocol, you’ll need a large bucket, or better yet, a 10-20 gallon plastic tote when considering the high ventilation that’s needed here. Make sure you thoroughly clean & dry the container before you do anything else. Any contaminants in the container will eventually get into your lizards. Cover the bottom of the container with ~ ½” of medium grain Calci-Sand. This should take care of the lizards calcium/mineral needs. Find a place to buy pin-head crickets in bulk (beware; you’ll be buying at least 1000 at a time!). Put the crickets in the container along with the cardboard egg-crate material they typically come with, and put nothing else in there. Feed them thoroughly cleaned pieces of carrots, romaine lettuce, apple, peaches and plums. Orange, yellow and red rose petals are good too, as are dandelions, as long as no pesticides or fertilizers are involved. For water, you only need to use a lemon, lime, orange or grapefruit wedge. This doubles as a water source and a vitamin/natural acids source. Make sure to only put in the container what the crickets can consume within a day or two. Make sure that any food items with mold or spoilage on it gets tossed immediately. Make sure the container stays dry and between 70-90F for most of the day. Under this cricket diet regiment, dusting should not be necessary.

Feed the DHL’s as many crickets as they will eat in a 15 minute period, about 2 to 3 times a day. Do this by adding a few crickets (10-20) at a time until they stop eating them. They sometimes gorge themselves on the crickets, which is usually followed by regurgitation. If they tend to regurgitate the crickets, reduce the amount of crickets per feeding time and increase their hydration cycle (more to follow). It’s OK to leave a few extra crickets in their cage, but be very careful not to leave too many as they will overstress the lizard and possibly attack too. If for some reason too many crickets are left in the cage, don’t panic, just throw in a fresh apple slice and they’ll go after that and leave your lizards alone. Eventually the lizard will hunt them down and eat them all. You can expect a full grown DHL to consume up to 100 pin heads a day, so be prepared! You can try to go up to 2wk old crickets, but if there’s any sign of weight loss or disinterest in the larger crickets, then go back to the pin heads as quick as possible.

As for hydration, even though they are desert animals, I’ve found hydration to be very important to their well being. For hydration I use a plastic Glad Lunch Box Container, with holes punched in the top. I put just enough warm water in the container to just barely cover the bottom. Next in go the animals, after which I gently mist them with a warm spray of water. I get them just wet enough to enable the wick effect. I then put the lid on and set aside for 10-15 minutes. You can tell if they’re drinking if they start licking the water that has wicked up to the corners of their mouth. I typically remove them when they stop licking and go back to scratching to get out. I do this 1-3 times a week depending on how hot they have been during the week. Sometimes they won’t drink, but that’s OK, it’s better to have a little too much water then to not get enough. If you go this route, make sure they have enough time in a heat zone to completely dry out before they go to bed. Don’t want them wet when they go down for the night.

One last suggestion, make sure they get real sunlight if you can. I have found no substitute for real sunlight when wanting to maintain healthy animals in captivity. There may be some artificial sources out there that work just as well, but I haven’t found them. Only sunlight seems to make my little guys really grow.

Roger

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