Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Does anyone have an opinion on the nutritional value of minimeals vs. silkworms vs. crickets vs. mealworms for beardies? Also, which is the easiest to handle? I'm using crickets, minimeals and reg. mealworms now. However, the minimeals freak my wife out, and the crickets (if bought in bulk) take up a lot of space.
The minimeals are a pain to get out of the container and seperate from their food. Is it ok if some of the food goes in the feeding dish with them (that is, will it hurt the dragons, or do they eat around it)?

Nutritionally silkworms are probably your best bet followed by crickets. We're not sure on mini's yet, nobody has had them analysed for nutritional content. Regular mealworms should be avoided because of the high amount of chitin and risk of impaction.

Sean
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Heart Mountain Herps

Also, mealworms are way too high in Phosphorus which robs the dragon of calcium and makes them prone to MDB. A few every week won't do this, but if they are a big part of the diet they will cause problems over time. The only way to get the correct calhos (Ca) ration with mealies is to inject them with calcium before feeding. This would be very time consuming!

Meal worms are also way too high in fat to be a major staple. Again a few a week won't hurt, but if eaten regularly there are several conditions that will arise.

Neither of these things will cause immediate problems, their effects are cumulative.

Last, around 50% (a little under) of a mealworm is NOT digestable or usable. It still takes up space though. If you feed mealworms they cause the animal to get full after ingesting a LOT less nutrients then either crickets or silkworms. Every part of a silkworm digests and can be used, much of the cricket is digestable (75% of adults crix, 95% of prewing and younger is digestable).

By digestable (for anyone intrested) I mean is able to be digested in the average time it takes food to pass through the digestive system. Many things CAN be digested if left for days, weeks, years in the stomach, but beardies have a pretty quick "turn over" time.

And then there is impaction.... but even before you consider this immediate and therefore more scary (its usually the only drawback anyone mentions to mealies) condition that can occur, mealies just don't make a good staple food nutritionally.
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I based my opinion of the minimeals on the information contained in an ad carried by Reptile magazine. Is this just so much hype? I guess I'm gullible.
Also, what other bugs are good for beardies? And what's a good place to get small crickets? I ordered bulk from Flukers but they were bigger than I thought appropriate for 12 week old dragons. Where can you reliably get 1 week old crickets?
Thanks.

If you scroll down the forum there are several posts about minimealworms. The guy has not done a bit of research on them. Everything he claims he has nothing backing it up... I personally can't stand the guy, because he makes his ads sound like it is THE BEST FOOD EVER, but he has nothing but his opinion backing that up. That picture of the BIG and little dragon got you right? I can take a picture of the biggest and smallest dragon in every one of my clutches and there is a signifigant difference (not as much as in that pic!) but I have had a non-thriver runt before. It says nothing about the growth rate of the big dragon, just that the smaller one has major problems!

I recommend Armstrongs Crickets:
http://www.armstrongcrickets.com/

You can be guaranteed of correctly sized, healthy crickets when you order from here.

Flukers is another black listed company. I don't know that I am allowd to talk about it in the kingsnake forum...hmmm, but lets just say they had a contest for a "Dragon a Day" free giveaway for their customers, and as people started recieving these free dragons they MAY or may not have reported skinny, diseased, malnourished animals that MAY or may not have run up high vet bills and died anyway, and MAY or may not have spread diseases to the "winners" other animals. If this gets deleted oh well, I tried.

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Lol, nice way to put that Jen. Hmmmm may or may not have been adenovirus. Other bugs that are good for beardies are roaches, they are better than crix even; higher in calcium, easy to breed, quiet, don't smell, and higher food value 1 roach = 2 crix basically.

Sean
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Heart Mountain Herps

Yeah if it wasn't for them I "may or may not have" had the experience I had...... Adenovirus is no joke and it is REAL.... and it will happen to you if your not careful......... the worst thing about it is that it's very hard to diagnose right away sometimes...... you could have it in your collection right now and not even know it is present........ There are amnimlas thsat make it to adult hood and just carry the virus......... study it, be aware of it, and know the people you deal with and their animals..... The safest colonies are ones that have been tested for it.

Later,
Robert
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A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,
adored by little statesmen, philosophers and divines.
Ralph Emerson

I feel like a schmuck! I guess I should known better, but because I saw it in Reptile magazine I thought you could depend on it. I work in public relation (boo, hiss) so I should know better than to believe everything I see in print. The Fluker info. is great too. For some reason I thought fraud and misrepresentation would be absent from the world of reptile enthusiasts.
At my age! No fool like an old fool.

So many thanks to all of you. Your insights are invaluable.

I know I can't link to other forums on Kingsnake but Google these words: board of inquiry reptiles

You will have to register with this forum to read the posts, but it is a great resource to check out the reptile releated companies you are going to deal with. You will never believe that the reptile community is innocent again!

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jen, that link you posted...do you always order from them? i order from wormman.com and the crics are cheaper, and they are all good size, and its MUCH less, they raise their prices bc they started shipping only UPS but even with a heat pack its still cheaper and those people MAKE you use next day air and double box and heat pack and its like 25 for 1000 crics...compared to 16 and change at wormman...are they worth it?

They are totally worth it. I have ordered from EVERY cricket provider and have consistently gotten crickets that were smelly, the wrong size, poorly packaged, late, and dead.

Armstrongs crickets gets every order perfect everytime. And I know my crickets are clean and healthy and free of things that I would REALLY not want to feed to my dragons. Was it Cheri that has the crickets tested from the different suppliers? E-mail her about the results. It does matter where you buy from.

And they don't even give me a discount, so this is all "from the heart".

http://www.armstrongcrickets.com/
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