Posted by:
phwyvern
at Sat Nov 22 18:10:04 2003 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by phwyvern ]
>>Thanks for the post. It seems you have things well thought out. My question is, what type of store do I get glycerine from? If from a super market, what section? Cakes? The glycerine has been the hardest thing for me to find. I found pure bee pollen with no problem and use it in my cricket/roach gutload food.
>>
The glycerine I got from a craft/hobby store actually (Michaels formerly known as MJDesigns). They have a section of supplies for cake decorating. The cake baking section at the grocery stores here seem to be next to worthless when it comes to the decoration supplies and I didn't see any glycerine there hence having to resort to a hobby store. Your grocery stores however, may stock glycerine in the cake baking section.
>>I also was wondering how much overall did all the supplies cost to make the one batch and how far will one batch will last. Would be cool to see cost efficiency to breeding your own waxworms.
>>
Well. From what I have read, it takes approximately 1.5 lbs of waxworm diet to raise 500 worms to maturity.
Gerber Rice Cereal (85g box) $1.69
Glycerine (2oz) $1.99
Quaker Wheat bran (226g box) $1.89
Clover Honey (12oz) $3.39
Bee Pollen tablets (90 tablets) $4.99
After tax is added the cost comes to just under $15
In the long run even though I paid $15 for the ingredients to make the food, I have enough of the stuff left over (except for 2 items) that I could continue to use to make another 1-2 batches of the food. I actually have enough bee pollen tablets left to make 3 more batches. Really all I need is to buy some more rice cereal and some more glycerine. The glycerine came in 2oz bottles so one bottle per batch is very convenient for measuring sake.
If I were to average out the cost of the items based on the amount I actually used, that one batch of food I made really only cost me around $7.
It costs me $10 to buy 500 mature larvae plus the additional cost of shipping. It would seem to be slightly cost effective for me to raise my own waxworms (probably just save on shipping and have the luxury of knowing exactly what was fed to the waxworms). One thing that led me to attempting this is not that I really needed the full size waxworms. I have some small frogs and salamanders but purchased waxworms are too large for them. If I raised my own then I could theoretically pick out smaller worms as needed to fit the size of the amphibs in question and better vary their diet. The surplus of the full size larvae would never be a problem - plenty of opportunity for the bearded dragons and box/wood turtles to chow down on them as snacks.
>>Anyone know if the moths are also nutritious? I know waxmoths are fatty little treats, but what about the moths?
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>>~ Juli ~
I have done some looking around but cannot find anything to state what the nutrtional content of the moths are - just the larvae. I would hazzard a guess that they are lower in fat content (possibly due the pysical/physiological changes they've gone through), but whether or not their overall composition of nutrients is balanced more towards healthy compared to the fatty larvae that I cannot say. I would say that just based on the dusty scales of the wings and small body size (ie the moths are mostly wings now), they probably should still not make up any large portion of an animals diet (primarily small animals versus large animals - all that excess useless body parts could lead to gut impaction and/or just taking up space that could better be served by other food items). I'm gonna try emailing some folks to see if they may know where to locate nutritional info on the moths (assuming it even exists).
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PHWyvern
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RE: Waxworm diet recipe - phwyvern, Sat Nov 22 18:10:04 2003