Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I've been gutloading my livefood with the same diet as what my green iguana eats, which I assume is very healthy and good for my insectivorous lizards in the long run as I've done a lot of research into what's good for my ig and what's not. Mainly the cricks and roaches get this same diet as it's handy for me since I've got the food there anyway.

My query is - there are certain foods I avoid giving my ig as they're high in phosporous, oxalic acid and other bad things, so if I feed my crickets and roaches on foods that are high in these "bad" things, will they pass the "baddies" onto my insect-eating lizards? Or do the cricks/roaches break down these bad nutrients, rendering them less harmful when eaten by a lizard? Or does it actually matter what I feed the insects?

I'd mainly like to know so I can inform others what's best to gutload their livefood on.

First off, I only keep snakes so only making educated guesses here!!

Two thoughts..

1) Phosphorous is an element, so, if insects take it in and iggy eats insect, iggy eating Phosphorous.

2) I believe the point of gutloading is to provide additional nutrition to the insectivorous animal. This gutload will be in various stages of digestion some of which would be only slightly digested so compounds that would break down during digestion would not be fully digested.

IMO, gutload only what is good for the lizard!!!
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Thanks,

Dave Colling

www.rainbows-r-us-reptiles.com

0.1 Wife (WC and still very fiesty)
0.2 kids (CBB, a big part of our selective breeding program)

LOL, to many snakes to list, last count:
26.49 BRB
20.21 BCI
And those are only the breeders

lots.lots.lots feeder mice and rats