Insects do not replace cells once they mature. In order for prey insects to adjust their nutritional content, it is most effective to keep them on a diet that enriches them for at least several days, preferably until they have molted at least once. To increase calcium content, quality food such as ground gamebird laying pellets can be augmented with calcium carbonate, found in powdered oyster shell or powdered eggshells. On the advice of an excellent herp vet, I found that many lizards will self-feed on small chips of eggshell left in their cages. Collared and Leopard lizards do this, and it may be worth considering for other species as well. The main thing is to have prey insects feed for an extended period on adequately nutritional food so they have time to incorporate nutrients into their tissues. I believe this is preferable to simple gut-loading.
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improving insect nutritional value
Replies (3)
Superior Gutloading :0) It's so important, I always tell people who say "Ya have to feed the bugs too" ??? (And there are more than ya think,...... How about if all you ate was starving chickens, how much nutrition do you think you would get.
Your lizards are only as healthy as the bugs they eat, so to speak. My bugs have a constant supply of food. Dry foods , things ground up or powered and then fresh greens veggies/fruits/ and flowers when available.
Good Post ! Always good to remind people who are new too !
Have a nice weekend God Bless Our Troops!
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PHEve / Eve
and both the baby and the adults love them. They barely hit the surface of the cage before being snapped up, and they can be dusted first, like crickets. I don't catch them in town though, for fear of pesticides, etc. I am lucky that there are lots of places nearby, but still far enough out of town where grasshoppers can be caught.
I also agree that you have to keep your crickets/feeders well fed. I use a local "mom and pop" pet store to obtain crickets. They feed their crickets daily. The big chain store has crickets in pre-packaged plastic containers and usually half of them are already dead as they sit on the shelf. And who knows when they last ate? After obtaining the crickets, I feed them raw vegetables each evening. There are always scraps from the salad I usually have from dinner that would have been thrown out, anyway. This also provides water to the crickets. I don't use lettuce or celery if I can help it, as I believe there is very little nutritional value to them, although they do contain a lot of water. If there are no fresh vegetables or fruit, the crickets get a little chicken feed. And I also use Eve's trick of placing some veggies or fruit in the lizard's cages in the evening, also. It feeds the crickets left in the cage, and hopefully keeps them from bothering the lizards as they sleep.
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Valerie Rae
We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now.
--Martin Luther King, Jr.--
God bless the USA
Good info, but doesn't everyone already gutload?
