Reptile & Amphibian Forums

we were having a discussion last night in the chat room and someone said oatmeal wasn't a good gutload for crickets. I was warned against using pet foods because of the dyes.
Now I wasn't using the oatmeal as a primary gutload. I have some cricket gutload food I bought when I got my beardie and I give them fruits and veg too. But thought since oatmeal is cheap it may be a good idea.

Hello spec:

I haven't found anything that stated oakmeal was bad for crickets but I did find the site where a receipe to make your own cricket food was. For convience sake, I pasted the receipe below, and the link to the site I got it from below that...there are also caresheets there for other feeder insects, including roaches and locusts:

"Cricket food must be of good quality - there are some good ones available, but you can make your own. This is the recipe:-
Rolled Oatmeal (4 cups)/ Dried Milk Powder (2 cups) / Dry Cat Food (low-protein), crushed (2 cups), Rep-Cal Calcium with D3 (2 teaspoon). Mix it all together and feed it to your crickets, it's a lot cheaper than buying it- don't forget fresh vegetables and half an orange!"

http://www.geocities.com/borderviewdragons

thanks for the link. I added it to my bookmarks and am going to print out a copy and add it to my increasing beardie file. Can't have too much info on hand. I hope to get away from crickets completely. Thinking about silkworms and roaches if I can get over the yuck factor.
newest picture of a healthy Zeffer if anyone cares to see

There are tons of options out there for gutloads. I think the key is variety. The better your crickets eat and the more variety they get, the better they are nutritionally for your dragons.

You can also try non-medicated egg laying mash (chicken feed). It comes in 50 pound bags for like 8 bucks. It has a good protein level, calcium etc and my crickets and feeder roaches seem to like it.

I also use tropical fish flakes, rolled oats and even commercial bought cricket feed. Plus I feed them fruits, veggies and greens for a water source.

Goodluck, LM
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chicken mash is cheaper than oats and more nutritous. Comercial bought food is good, and I think cheaper than oats. Since going away from oats as a primary food I have had a better success with cricket survival.
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Derek Affonce
DeKeAff Exotics
dekeaffexotics.com

Hello, is it the same as regular oatmeal you buy at the supermaket? Thanks. Rico

Hi. I used to buy the cricket-food you find in pet stores, but it was expensive. Then I thought of something - as I buy bulk Rep-cal bearded dragon pellets (5 lbs bags last a while) I simply feed my crickets this! Moisten the pellets, just like you would for feeding dragons. This way the dragons are guaranteed to get the pellet food nutrition, and moistened pellets are a good safe way to give the crickets water too!

Kameron