Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Sorry all - Ive had food stuck in my mind!

I read a ton of sites theat suggest cockroaches. They are supposed to be a good source and easy to maintain a colony. I see there are breeders out there so I know where to get clean roaches.

I was worried that they may be too cruchy and hurt my cham. much like a mealworm. However Id love to use them instead of crickets - or at least not have to deal with the crix as much. fatter - easy to keep - and they can fly - which would drive my cham to new levels of hunting.

Do any of you have experience with this?
thanks again for the time.

-adam

i think roaches would be cool to feed my cham.
i only have 1 question. can they chew through mesh screens? im guessing yes.
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too fast to live >< too young to die

I've read that roaches are good also. Madagascar hissing roaches are probably what you will want to look for. I don't know much about using them as a staple, but I know that they are good. Variety is a key thing to look at when feeding chams. I would use the roaches with the crickets, and even silkies if you can. Then offer the wax and mealies as a treat.
~Lindsay

all roaches are fairly high in fat and fiber. so your cham may have trouble digesting them. as for hissers, they give off a strong pheremone that kinda smells like bad onions. none of my chams would go for them. it is possible that they could chew through the metal, and i don't know about you, but i have plenty of crickets escaping already, i don't need roaches doing it too!

As far as roaches go. Lobsters, Orange Heads, Orange Spots, Discoids, Death Heads, Green Banana roaches, Seriums & Six spots are good feeders. Hissers are too crunchy and hard. Plus they have so much fat relative to the other feeders listed above. Most of the ones I've listed are soft bodied & meatier.

See the E-zine article on roaches as feeders.

http://www.chameleonnews.com/year2003/may2003/roaches/roaches.html

Ww

Hi Adam,

Since there is some interest in feeding "roaches"...
I will jump in and relay our experiences with them as food for the chams.

First... we have tried 3 kinds of roaches: orange heads; lobster; and mad hissers.

First and foremost - the flying thing is a big deterrant. Even if you manage to get them into the cham's enclosure before they fly off into the house - they run and hide under anything in the cage (plants; flower pot; etc.) Once the bug is hidden it's "out of sight, out of mind" (we had one mad hisser that remained hidden for months until we finally found it)

The roaches come out at night when the chams are sleeping to feed, and it is harder than heck to find them without tearing up the enclosure.

Next - containment of the roaches. We used large storage tubs with screened lids for all the roaches. Since the mad hissers can even climb glass - you have to use vaseline or "Bug Barricade" to keep them contained. The vaseline is a mess, and even though "Bug Barricade" is great - it is hard to find and expensive.

Now to feeding to the chams - only appropriately sized roaches can be fed. We keep many sizes of chameleons (from stumptails to melleri) and figured this would be "no big deal". Wrong - we ended up with way too many adults, and no one to feed them to. Hence, we started giving them away for new colony starting. Finally, after keeping them for over 2 years, we decided to stop keeping them, and sold the colony of mad hissers (containing over 250 adults).

The chams may or may not take to eating roaches too. Before getting a colony, I recommend trying a few juvenile roaches to see if your chams will eat them. Not all do. Even though we had 20-30 adult panthers, not all would eat them - and usually only the males. The same thing with the veiled - usually only our big males would eat them - and then only maybe one or two per week.

This made it more trouble than it was worth. We now offer crickets; superworms; silkworms; moths - and waxworms as treats. This is a lot easier, trust me - and we have over 200 mouths to feed at any given time.

Hope this gives you some insight
Morgana - Reptayls, Ltd.

Hello!

I see you live in Salem. I live in Portland. Do you breed your panthers? If possible I would love to come visit your place and see your set up to get me some ideas. I think my wife would love to see em as well.

thanks for your answer. Kinda solved my question. I guess if they are a pian and cant be used as a staple food - then they really are not worth it. I just HATE crickets!!

-adam

Hi again Adam,

Yup... we are in Salem. Hi neighbor!!
Yes, we breed panthers..... we have from 3 month to 11 months available currently. You can give us a call too - 503-856-8950

You might want to visit our MSN forum -
http://groups.msn.com/REPTAYLSChameleons

We are currently working on the test website for www.reptayls-
http://www.geocities.com/reptayls/index.htm
Hopefully we will get some input as to what folks want to see on websites for chams.

This will give you a small idea of what we have. Our panther morphs include classic ambanja; blue bar ambanja; red bar ambanja; nosy be; tamatave; sambava and ambilobe. We also have veiled; stumptails; quadricornis; deremensis; jacksons; melleri. We are considering expanding to include hoenelli and rudis. At the moment - in the nursery, we have veiled and nosy. Due to hatch soon: flapnecks; more veiled; more panthers.

Back to the food situation... start cultivating silkworms - they are neat, easy to feed, and very nutritious.

Hope this helps,
Morgana - Reptayls, Ltd.