Reptile & Amphibian Forums

i know people may get bent out of shape but i would appreciate your thoughts.

Ok so we gutload our insects so that the are higher in nutrition, almost all gutload contains some form of cat food. Has anyone ever done or looked at feeding beardies a high quality catfood as part of a supplemental diet and had good results, are there any forms of minced meat people use instead of insect from time to time.

The gut load i use does not contain any form of any kind of catfood. i dont know what kind of gutload you are using. but ive never heard of one containing cat food. i also dont think it is very smart to feed a bearded dragon cat food. i doubt it would benifit the dragon in any way.
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sincerely,
Jonathan D. de Kluyver
JDDK Reptiles
Quality Reptiles and Amphibianswww.jddkreptiles.com

if you read the ingredients on most gutloads it is the same ingredients as cat food, if you do a search on gutload recipes they list cat food, i didnt think it was a good i dea either but i am curious

catfood is used alot in home made gutloads because it contains alot of protein and other basic ingredients good for crickets and other insects. But I wouldn't feed catfood or dogfood to a bearded dragon directly because it is far from nutritionally complete for bearded dragons. It also has stuff that wouldn't be good for your dragons, especially adults. There is typically too much fat and protein in dog and cat food than an adult dragon needs and not enough of what he does need like calcium and vitamine D3.

To my knowledge insects feed on a diet consisting of cat/dog food as well as other ingredients does't have any harmful effects on dragons and other reptiles that eat the insects. All creatures break down and reform what they eat according to what their body specifically needs. Even chewing alters the food eaten plus digestive ensymes added in the process. Required raw nutrients are then extracted via the bowel into the blood and recreated/utilized in chemical reactions to do what is needed by the body. The end resulting proteins in crickets is probably alot different than proteins that came from catfood. Yes I am guessing on this part but to me it does make sense..and no I am not going to spend a few hours online trying to prove my theory is right or even wrong, LOL.