Forgive the second post on this subject, but I felt it was important and worth posting in it's own thread. There is nothing worse than watching something you care for waste away and die without knowing what is wrong or how to help.
As some of you may remember, a few years ago I lost 17 Leopard Geckos over a period of about 6 months to an "unknown" cause, and had many more that got sick. As it turned out, I had to get Dr. Frederic L. Frye (world's most renowned Reptile Pathologist) to help me with the last of 5 necropsies I had done to get to the bottom of the problem.
As it turned out, my geckos were sick and dying from Hepatic Lipidosis, or fatty liver disease, which was caused from Mycotoxic poisoning from ingesting crickets that were fed on moldy corn-based food. When cricket feed is allowed to get wet and warm, it develops a mold that produces Aflatoxins... more specifically Aspergilus flavus, or B1. This substance is poison, but does not harm the crickets. When the geckos eat the toxic crickets, over a period of time their livers begin to fail from trying to filter out the poison and they will die a slow and agonizing death. Once I knew what the problem was and discontinued using the poison crickets, I was able to save about 10 other geckos that were suffering.
Since many of the cricket growers are in the southern states where it is hot and humid, and they use chicken mash as feed for the crix, it is an ideal environment for mold to develop on the food. I went public on this when I was going through it, and the cricket supplier tried to sue me for making "defamatory" remarks. When I sent all the patholgy reports and documentation to his attorneys, the case was dropped.
Recently, I had a problem with bacterial infections in several of my geckos. Nothing showed up on the comventional fecal tests, but when I submitted a stool sample to a lab for a culture, it showed bacteria was the problem. Out of curiosity, I sent in about a half-dozen live crickets right out of the shipping box to the same lab, and guess what? They were LOADED with 4 strains of gram negative bacteria and 1 strain of gram positive... all of the type that would cause severe sickness in my Leos. Fortunately, all of my sick geckos repsonded very well with Baytril, and I stopped using that cricket vendor.
So now what? There MUST be a cricket supplier out there that is aware of these potentially lethal problems and gives a 'you-know-what' about the quality of the feeders they are supplying. I certainly can't afford to take crickets in for lab testing every time I get a shipment, and I don't know if there is a similar problem with mealworms. I think that if everyone who feeds their animals crickets should really lean on the suppliers and become aware of the issue. This is a very good argument for feeding your crickets fresh produce and never allowing your commercial cricket food to become wet.
Thanks for letting me 'rant'....
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Marcia McGuiness
Golden Gate Geckos
www.goldengategeckos.com
