Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Do any of you know a good gutload recipe that is cheap and the ingrediants can be bought a grocery store?

to be honest... fish food is what i herd a bud of mine use. He swears by it. He just gets a huge ass can and it lasts quite a while. smells bad... but crickets smell bad to begin with.

The following site has a good receipe for gut load for crickets. I have used it a few times but find it is just easier feeding my crickets mixed greens and orange slices (for moisture). Then again, I don't breed crickets nor will I ever, way way to much trouble.

http://www.geocities.com/borderviewdragons/cricket.html

feeding crix mixed fruits and veggies is good but if thats all you feed then your missing something important...protien!...you can buy a commericial gutload (i recommend "cricket diet by T-rex) or good quality fish flakes or even chicken feed...some folks use dry dog food also

Using the mix provided on the link i gave above provides all teh protein they need. The greens provides what vitamines that may be missing from the dry mix and moisture. I use just greens when I don't have anough crickets to make it worth while adding a dish of the dry stuff. Since I pretty much feed silkworms to what reptiles i have that need insect food, I don't use crickets to often anymore.

A combination of the dry mix and fresh mixed greens, works well.

have you had any luck breeding silkworms??...i haven't tried yet but it would probably be easier and cheaper than ordering them all the time

I can get the moths to mate (really not hard to do, just put then in a small enough container so they can walk to the opposite sex..they seem to have lost the ability to fly) and lay lots of eggs..but hatching I haven't mastered yet LOL. My first attempt at hatching eggs resulted in about 12 out of 500 eggs hatching, not a very good track record.

The only reason I have silkworms eggs now was my bearded dragon decided to brumate a week after I orderd a large shipment of silkworms. Without her awake to eat the worms...they all coccooned. Decided to keep the eggs and try to hatch them again. A better person to talk to for information about breeding silkworms successfully would be jdany. Unfortunately that is the only name I know him by, not sure if he posts anywhere here or not. I do know he shows up for most of the regular reptile chats here at kingsnake. The scheduled chats are Tuesday 8-9pm, Friday and Sunday at 9-11pm