Hello Marcia



Dang crickets I hate them but my lizards cant do without them, theirs not a single food item that can give you results that crickets give. They seem to have the best ratio, lizards digest them quickly and feed on them with appetite.

I dust them with Rep-cal d3 every day, I use Avitron bird drops once a week, it’s a multi vitamins iv been using for decades, I use to work a 4000 bird aviary, in the old days bird products received far more research then reptile products, this one worked and still do the job for my animals.



Many years ago I read an article about a successful varanids breeder, reporting on multi clutching small varanids, in this article he was interviewed and ask about his feeding, he said crickets exclusively and mice, the interviewer (Vivarium) said you gut load crickets to get such breeding success? The breeder said no way I actually do the opposite, of course the interviewer took him for a fool and never again invited him to his magazine, you see this interviewer had just published an article about the benefits of gut loading crickets.



At the time 1996? Not sure! I knew this breeder knew something I was missing, its only recently that I understood about the crickets and how they perform, I guess it will take this hubby an other decade or so to understand this.



The problem with peoples is they publish anything without testing other ways, this guy published about gut loading without really knowing what he was saying, he never proved his diet with captive in any way, 1000s of peoples read this article and from there on the word is out, mouth to ear from this continent to the next crickets need to be gut loaded. Believe it or not in the same article the breeder said he wasn’t using any UVs and kept multiclutching his monitors, this is when I stopped using these dumb bulbs.



Sins my work with varanids was exclusive to medium and large size species, I never needed to feed crickets, so I didn’t really pay attention to them, now I understand they are a high energy food have an excellent ratio and lizard feed on them with appetite day after day, this is very important.

Rgds

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