The crickets alone would be enough for a month for two of them, except maybe when a female is gravid or post-gravid, although sometimes they go through periods when they're tired of the same one or two food items, so that variety is good. The one exception is the waxworms. They're not a normal food; they're for sepecific siuations where the animal is extremely emaciated and you've already tried feding it absolutely everything else. Nutritionally they're like bacon. And whenever one dies, it rots amazingly quickly and fouls the whole container. See if you can figure out how to just pupate them successfully; then at least you'll have moths for the lizards to chase.

Try to hold back on the superworms and use the other stuff first. Supers are a bit too much of a favorite, and many collards will start holding out for them once they realize they can, which makes providing a balanced diet more difficult. They aren't the worst feeder in the world, but they have one of the best shelf lives of all feeder insects, so when you're up to your eyeballs in shorter-lived feeder species it's best to move the supers to the back of the shelf until you actually need them.

Another word of advice, not all collards will eat vegetables. If yours give you any trouble, you can just use things like zuchini/squash/collard greens/yams as the insects' moisture source instead of the more traditional apples/carrots/potatoes/water gel. In fact with crickets, that's ALL I give them to eat, and they do fine. Often when the next monthly expo rollls around I'm still scrambling furiously to get all the still-living crickets fed off so I can clean out their tub before I buy more and reload.

Considering what you're starting out with, I would say feed them as many phoenix worms and crickets as they want. If a few crickets run under a rock without getting eaten you can go ahead and toss a few more in, but if there's more than half a dozen in there visible at the same time that's enough until after the lizards eat and want more. Rememeber in the morning to lift the water dish before feeding them, because yesterdays's leftover crickets will pretty much all be hiding under there.

Use this first batch of mealworms sparingly, if the lizards' preferences allow that. Always dust them, because they're high in phosphorus, plus it seems to actually increase their palatability. (I'm not kidding; sometimes I'll offer a plain mealworms just because I want to use up the last few in the container or whatever and I skip the powder because I know everybody's had enough supplementation, and the lizard I'm offering it to will often as not lick it, do a double take, lick it tentatively one more time, and then glare at me like "Where's the donut powder?" ) Let the lizards see your hand come close with the food. Don't chase them with it, but drop it nearby once they're tracking it. Very soon they'll be racing over to take mealworms from your hand. If they fill up on a lot of mealworms they aren't going to be interested in little tiny phoenix worms though, so try to keep the mealies at maybe one a day each for training purposes.


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0.1 2006 Western Hognose (Bebe)
0.1 age unknown Cane Toad (Hengo)
0.1 2005 White-Banded Sheen Skink (Minerva)
1.0 2006 Northern Diamondback Terrapin (Queequeg)
1.0 2006 Madagascan Speckled "Hognose" (Sigmund)
1.0 2008 Bullsnake (Winkle)
1.2 2008 Eastern Collared Lizards (Pancho, Lupe, and Chica)
2.0 2009 Eastern Collared Lizards (Cesar and Nino)

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