Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have read somewhere that aged/old crickets should be avoided when feeding chameleons.I have multiple cricket enclosures and some of them might be too old.Any nutritional significant differences?

I've read (looking for the source again) that crickets produce eggs right up until they die. The crickets that are loaded with eggs are supposed to be quite nutritional. So, just something to think about when you are figuring out at what point nutrition drops.

I wouldn't think that their short livespan allows for much drop in nutrition.
-----
CANADIAN SILKWORMS

I agree with Will, there shouldn't be any problems with feeding old crickets unless you are not "feeding" your crickets. If the crickets haven't eaten before you give them to your Cham then they just nutrition-free hard insect casings.

Those older crickets usually have those dark brown shells which is hard for the chams to digest (straight from my vet). He recommended tossing those and sticking to the smaller, light colored crixs.

He had a case where a cham was impacted...when cleared, it was waste enclosed in a dark brown cricket shell! Yuk!

Good luck!
-----
2.1 Black Labs Tucker, Raider and Lacey
1.0 Lepoard Gecko Kumar (Another lost pet RIP and party on with Harold!)
2.0 Horses Smoothie and Rocky
1.0 Husbands (he puts up with me)
1.2 Kids-Trevor (congrats c/o 2006), Logan and Rylie
1.1 Ferrets Tank and Ellie (The fun fuzzies)
1.1 Veiled Chams Squiggy and Pudge (may she RIP)
0.1 Snowflake Cornsnake Lucky

I think you must be reffering to black/field crickets as those are the ones to be crunchier of all.I've been told that impaction is possible if feeding with those only.Since then I switched to softer bodied crix like acheta domestica.But I still don't know if this theory is correct.I have posted some questions in the past but I didn't get back much from it..
Also do superworms fall into this high chitin group?

I would not worry about the feeder crickets. The adult female ovipositor is long and strong. Cyrus spit one out (about 15 minutes after he had eaten it) completely intact and I think it was the ovipositor which got stuck. So you might want to try and feed off the females younger, but Cyrus is still a sub-adult, it is less likely that an adult would have the same issue. Some people pull off the ovi - I just can't bring myself to do it.

Superworms have less chitin than mealworms (innards compared to exoskeleton). I feed both Darwin and Cyrus a lot of supers and have had no trouble, but of course they get a variety of other foods.

Here is an insect nutrition chart for some common and some not so common insects. www.ent.iastate.edu/Misc/insectnutrition.html

and here is a lengthy and comprehensive article all about insects as food. it is based on human consumption but discusses the nutritional value so who cares whose mouth it is going in to

lele

A Concise Summary of the General Nutritional Value of Insects

-----
Chameleon Help & Resource Info
1.0 Nosy Be Panther Chameleon - Cyrus
0.1 Veiled Chameleon - Luna. She's now hanging from her big jungle gym in the sky
1.0 Beardie - Darwin
1.1 Side-blotched lizards - Ana and Stan for now
0.2 felines - Kyndra and Lita
0.1 African Clawed Frog - Skippy
0.1 Chilean Rose Hair Tarantula - Rosa Leigh, Died 4/21/06
0.1 Goliath Bird-Eater Tarantula - Natasha, donated to science 4/4/06
?.? Pinktoe Tarantula - no name yet

So if I understand well what you said it is not ok to feed black crickets or at least the females with the ovipositors,am I correct?
Thanks for the reading.