Beardie1900":2svrm519 said:
Ok, but even with that being the case, Don't they still have to be gut-loaded due to the imbalance?
and if so, what gut load should I be using for my worms? do they eat anything specific? I have been having a lot of questions on my mind since I got a bearded dragon so please excuse my lack of knowledge. :study: :study: :study:
Ah no worries ask questions! I have a few science journals about insect nutrition if you would like to read them. They are technical but have better information than you'll find on the web generally.
If you are taking about silkworms, they only eat mulberry leaves or commercial mulberry leaf chow. The chow can be altered to improve the worm's nutrition but I've only seen that in scientific studies, those of us with just pet dragons feed the chow as it is (or leaves if you have a mulberry tree) and dust the worms.
Other worms eat other things. Superworms and meal worms are scavagners and will eat a wide range of things - I feed mine fruits, veggies, greens, and occasionally small bits of meat. Soldier fly larvae (Phoenix worms) are composting maggots mine would eat fruit, veggies and bread but not really greens. Hornworms are specialists like silkworms and in captivity eat chow.
There are a couple ways to look at gutloading.
One is to help fill the insects digestive system up with good healthy food so that some of that gets passed on to the reptile. Part of this food will be undigested and part will be digested so when the bug is eaten the dragon gets much more than the bug would have on its own. For this generally a variety of fresh produce is what gets offered (to non-specialist insects) - I use the same ingredients that go into my dragons salad (even yesterday's salad goes to the bugs) as well as scraps from the kitchen like pepper tops, squash guts, banana peels, melon rinds, carrot ends and so forth. Offer just as much as they will eat though or you could foul up your insect bin really gross.
The other is to use a specificly mixed food that provides the right amount of calcium so that the insects poor Ca
ratio is fixed. There's a lot of products that claim to boost calcium but don't however, I'd have to look up which ones actually do what they claim. :study:
My preference is to feed good fresh food to the bugs and supplement calcium with a good quality dust instead of diet. I think it's simpler for a lot of people that way because of how unreliable commercial diet products are.
