Reptile & Amphibian Forums

A couple years ago I was feeding baby frogs hungry but healthy crickets and got some type of calcium defiency. Really sick frogs near death.... so I consulted with a vet and got them on gut loaded crickets and voila.... back to happy healthy frogs.

I have fed hungry crickets to tarantulas for years and years then switched to gut loaded crickets and saw NO side effects either way.

Granted frogs and tarantulas are polar opposite of monitors. I do not feed my monitors dusted insects because they don't like the taste of them as much. They more eagerly eat the non-dusted crickets. So I prefer to gutload all feeder insects.

Also I think the feeding of rodents makes up for any nutriional defiencys in monitors or when feeding hungry bugs.

To sum up I have seen side effects in certain creatures on a hungry cricket diet....I have NOT seen side effects with any of these creatures on a gutloaded cricket diet. I don't know what the nutritional value of a starved cricket is...thats why I gut load everything.

To me gut loading is a very odd way to think about feeding prey animals.

Its odd because your assuming the prey was fed a poor diet. But if the prey is healthy then it must have a suitable diet.

What that means is, feed your food items a normal diet that allows them to be healthy and the reptiles that feed on them will also be healthy.

Again I think the term gut loading is a weird bandaid approach to poor husbandry. Cheers

Frank, I think it's a definitional difference. Gut loading IS feeding your crickets. So Gutloading and feeding your feeders is the same thing. You just don't like that term

Well I can tell you that upside down frog in the picture is mighty weird. They ain't suppose to do that. But he pulled through when I got him on crickets that ate for 24 hours. Or shall I say gut loaded crickets

The thing is if the nutritional value of a cricket that has not eaten in some time is as low as I suspect. Then it is the rodents that are also being fed to the lizard that is covering up their nutritional shortages. In that case why even feed crickets?

Another factor is where you get the crickets if they come from the breeder maybe it is not that long since they ate. If the crickets come from a pet store they are not likely fed.

My point is, why don't you feed your crickets. That should be normal, If you strave them, that should be considered wrong.

As a person who has bred and raised crickets. They feed daily. So why would anyone not feed them.

The term Gutload, is to feed them a "special" mixture of vitamins and minerals and such, which is entirely not needed and is most likely to apease the keeper and not the animal.

Again we are on a Monitor forum, so I will address this with monitors. I have bred and produced many generations of varanids and never gutloaded anything. In fact, I also breed my own mice and I feed the crickets what I feed the mice.

With that in mind, I have not seen anyone outproduce our animals, or out grow our animals or out live our animals. And lord knows, I would love to see that. It confuses me when people think this and that is required, necessary, or needed, when applied to varanids has not shown to be of benefit. Better yet, the results of gutloading as not exceeded NOT gut loading.

If gutloading helps your individual monitor, then I would look at something missing in your husbandry. And that goes for the frog as well.

For example, if you keep your varanids without proper temp choices, they may only be able to assimilate five crickets a week. In that case, those crickets better be "strong". If you kept those same monitors with an option to all the heat they needed, they could consume and assimilate 100 crickets a week, in that case, the amount of crickets will not only support the needs of the monitors, but also supply lots of roughage. The crickets would not need to be healthy or gutloaded.

The actual reality is, if the monitors can only assimilate five crickets a week, they will fail inspite of the gutloading. So gutloading is not a cure. What is actually needed is to improve your husbandry so that gutloading is not needed and the animals do progress normally.

My experience with this forum is, the keepers who practice such things as gutloading and UV bulbs, disappear as soon as their animals fail, and they do fail.

The folks who have succeeded usually paid attemtion to such things as temps and humidity, proper substrate, nesting, etc. Not gutloading and UV bulbs.

So in practice, my own work, and with observation, the result of others, Gutloading is a bit misleading. Its something of a commerical bandaid. Cheers

If you're having such poor results with hungry crickets, why not use roaches instead? I've heard the nutritional content is much better, and they are relatively easy to breed at home (if you so choose). With the higher protein content, and meat to shell ratio, you wouldn't have to be concerned about gut loading, like you do the crickets. Especially if you set up your own colony at home, you will always know they're being fed. Please correct me if I'm wrong, just trying to be helpful.

~Jill

There has been a lot about gutloading lately.I agree with Nate,and think gutloading is a redundant term.Gutloading came out when there was not much thought given to the diet of the prey item and how it related to the health of our animals.Frank of coarse sees the bigger picture of how all levels of care interact.
We need to stress better husbandry and that includes better care of our feeders.I have dogfood and clean water avaible to my feeder crickets at all times,dust them with calcium with d3 before i feed them to my monitors.Gutloading is in there somewhere LOL. Moe

Cricket gutload is or was an actual product. The term just stuck probably.

I mean... When I think of the term gutloading, I'm thinking about feeding the crickets so they are very nutritious for the animals that eat them. You know the saying: "you are what you eat"? The same is true for prey animals. If they are not fed well, they are gonna suffer from malnutrition and the animals eat them are also going to suffer from malnutrition.

"My experience with this forum is, the keepers who practice such things as gutloading and UV bulbs, disappear as soon as their animals fail, and they do fail."

Oh Frank, why must you say such things ?
UV bulbs, when applied correctly, are good and sensible gutloading cannot hurt... only help.

Thats just the facts.

Cheers, Todd G.

I can't remember who said it, but, he said: without good food there would no art, music, science, civilizations...something a long that line. Italian food is way up there in the top world cuisine and they produce some of the most beautiful arts made incredible scientific discoveries. The body is the garden of the soul, they say!

I can't remember who said it, but, he said: without good food there would no art, music, science, civilizations...something a long that line. Italian food is way up there in the top world cuisine and they produce some of the most beautiful arts made incredible scientific discoveries. The body is the garden of the soul, they say

Who ever said that obviously never knew any musicians. I am a musician and I can tell you that most musicians live on diets that would kill most people. Free chicken wings from gigs, free hamburgers from gigs, ramen noodles chinese food($5 lunch specials are a great deal when can afford them.). Sometimes you play a benefit and get lucky because they're doing a barbeque for it or something.

Two men died and were standing at St. Peters gate. St.Peter asked them to explain to him what they had done on Earth that would allow them to come through his gate.
The first man responded. "Well I was a very important person in my community, I was a very successful attorney. I made $250,000 last year".
The second man in amazement replied. "$250,000??? man I only made 6 grand last year". At which point St. Peter replied "No doubt dude!!! What instrument do you play"?

If you look at all the major civilizations, they all make great food, or at least did. English food used to be the bomb...way back before the industrial revolution. French people used to heir English cooks to cook for them. And you know what they say! Every great cook probably have some Chinese blood flowing in their veins.

But did they gutload crickets?

Probably...if they were raising it to feed their animals.

FR,

I feed my crickets now. That was the point alot of people don't. I see rodents, cickets, roaches etc. Nibbling and eating food throughout the day. It seems natural that they should be fed before becoming a monitors lunch.

In the case of the frogs I didn't change anything in their environment other then feeding the crickets and thats all it took to fix the problem. Still have them in fact years later.