Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Now that we have crickets running all over our house ) I've been trying different non-live foods for our two one-year beardeds (Fred & Ethel). They get their greens and eat various pellets and dried crickets avidly so choice is not problem. But in looking at the ingredients in some of the products there seem to some potentially bad items (fyi: I am a pediatrician).

Does anybody know about such things, and have specific reccomendations for non-live food that is both eaten avidly and has all and only lizard appropriate ingredients?

Two examples:

Zoo Med's Rept Cricket (flavor scented, vitamin enriched, for all cricket feeding reptiles) has Copper Sulfate... many such metals may be necessary in VERY VERY VERY small trace amounts that are in food naturally, but are easy to overdose on and be toxic.

Nature Zone Bearded Dragon Bites... has MILK listed as its first ingredient, which is only for baby mammals, and can be indigestible even by many adult mammals and is not part of the natural diet for any reptiles.

-Steve

we use silkworms as our main foodsource--besides greens of course. Our guy also LOVES the "Can-o-crickets"--they have a better nutritional value than the dried ones--more moisture too.

We have had great luck with our silkworms--they have little smell and DO NOT crawl out of their box. The only drawback is that they eat only mullberry leaves or silkwormchow. We hatched our last batch from eggs. They take VERY little maintenance and again they do not escape.

As far as pellets we use RepCal--their ingredients only look scarry at the end--all the vitamins...

DM

Thanks... we are going with various pre-dead crickets and I'll try can-o-crickets, plus veggies & pellets, and hand feed treat of a few wax worms (I know... too rich for them... but hey an occassional desert treat is okay.

But I am still curious if anybody out there has info on such non-reptile ingredients in reptile food... milk, copper sulfate etc...?