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My searches for a hornworm nutritional analysis have come up empty. Has anyone else had any luck?

"They are very high in protein (approximately 58%) but also high in fat, therefore, you would not want to feed a steady diet of these to your chameleon. You should always offer a variety of food."
http://www.chameleonnews.com/hornworms.html

I found the same article on hornworms at the e-zine, but still haven't found a nutritional analysis. How fat is high fat? All the other common feeders appear on nutritional charts so you can compare them, but they never include hornworms, so I can't find a way to compare them to other insects. I'll post if I ever find it, any help would be appreciated.

I sent the hornworms that we have over here to the lab for an official nutritional analysis. Keep in mind we feed a different chow to our hornworms than other people (its tan in color) so that might change the overall results compared to other foods, but this is what they came out like.

Fat 3.07%
Protein 8.87%
Calcium 46.4mg/100g
Moisture 85.61%

After getting the analysis back it was nice to see the high level of calcium that they attain. The fat came back low which was nice to see. The protein came back low which was unexpected, but still not bad. All those percents can be accounted for by the high moisture content. These worms are just filled with water which throws off the other content. Also I think the ability to actually gutload these animals helps a ton. We feed our worms high quality food which in turn gets passed onto our animals.

Rob Misiewicz

Great Lakes Hornworm
TKO Dragons

Your analysis is very informative. I can't believe you actually sent one in yourself for analysis! Thanks again.

Nice Rob. In regards to the gutload you use, can you share with us how it is different from traditional chow aside from color?

The chow that we use is specifically formulated for hornworms. We've used a whole array of food for hornworms and we've found that ours works best for us. We've formulated our food to fit our needs and the need of the worms. I'm not sure what makes up the other chows, I don't know the formulas. We've tested many different ingredients to see what benefits the worms the most. The reason our food is tan is due to the wheat and soy in the mixture. I'm not sure what the hornworm nutritional analysis would be with other foods. I just wanted to make sure there was no confusion.

Rob Misiewicz

Great Lakes Hornworm
TKO Dragons

I breed mountain horned dragons instead of chameleons but I use Robs hornworms. My last clutch was given small hornworms at an early age (about 4 weeks) along with crickets and minimealworms. They love them and I believe it helped them to thrive. They have started eating earthworms months earlier than my other clutches. I'm not sure if Rob's worms are the reason for this but it's the first clutch that had taken small earthworms before 3 or 4 months of age.

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BONNIE