here's references on Ca:P data for foods which would be more suitable as cricket food to raise Ca:P.

http://boxturtlesite.org/min.html
http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/search/

In my opinion, crickets can be used, but should be used only as occasional food, and should be supplemented or feed a better diet than suggested, to raise Ca:P value. Those were my primary differences with your message.

Here are references for Ca:P data for the various insects themselves. The are insects with better Ca:P ratios, though fat content may be higher. I confess I do not know what the Ca:P of a Pogonomyrmex is...do you? But I would speculate that given it's exoskeleton, it is probably higher than a cricket and the fat content would be nil. Regardless, we already know from extensive prior research that these ants are the staple diet of the horned lizard, and common sense observations in nature would dictate that the natural diet already taken by the animal must be the best. I fail to see the logic as to why it would be any different in a CB example. The most prevalent reason I see for people advocating alternate staple diets, is not for scientific purposes...it is because they usually have a commercial interest in selling the lizards, or because they don't live in horned lizard/harvester ant native territory, and they don't want to shell out for ants.

http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:FdMGaAFKCbAJ:www.nagonline.net/Technical%20Papers/NAGFS00397Insects-JONIFEB24,2002MODIFIED.pdf Feeding Captive Insectivorous Animals: Nutritional Aspects of Insects as Food&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1
http://nagonline.net/technical_papers.htm
http://www.jurassipet.com/Support/ca_p_ratios.html
http://www.grubco.com/Nutritional_Information.cfm

For some time I have known that earthworms were very nutritional for my box turtles. And I have tried before to offer them to a HL. But the one's I use for the turtles are large. I see that Petco is now selling very small ones, and I will probably try some out to see if my HL's are in interested.



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"A man that should call everything by it's right name, would hardly pass the streets without being knocked down as a common enemy." The Complete Works of George Savile, First Marquess of Halifax 1912,246

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