Hydration W/ Freeze Dried Crickets

Hello everyone,

My wife and I have a beardie named Peppi. He is 11 months old, and about 15'' long. After feeding him crickets for his first few months of life my wife decided that she couldn't tolerate them being in the house, and sadly in Canada dubia are illegal. So, we switched through a couple commercial diets and settled on Beardie Bites, which he really likes, but we noticed he wasn't growing very fast after we made the switch. Now he eats Fluker's brand freeze dried crickets, which he also loves (he even licks up the fallen off legs from the edges of his dish.) We feed him these as much as he will eat, always keeping his bowl stocked with a bunch of them.

My questions are, does he still need to have the crickets dusted, as the packaging says that they are gut loaded with calcuim, and secondly, as he is not getting any hydration from this food how often would it be recommended to bathe him? Every time he has had a bath since switching to the freeze dried crickets he drinks up the water for around a minute before switching to just soaking.

Thank you all for your help!

My two youngsters (Peppa and Toothless) are about the same age as your's , at a tad over 10 months old. They are on two live insect feeds per day (about 20 medium-large crickets each per day + some silkworms and a daily serve of greens and grated veg).

If you not allowed to have crickets in the house, and commercial roaches are illegal, other options are :

silkworms (excellent)
calcigents (excellent)
superworms (OK as treats for adult dragons)
locuses

I'd avoid using freeze dried or canned insects , unlikely your dragon will tolerate them.
Bites are worthless nutritionally.
Dry or soft pellets are OK as a "SNACK".

Only other option is perhaps BUG PIE see http://www.repashy.com.au/index.php?route=product/category&path=59_63

Flukers has serval products that don't live up to the promises of their packaging. I would not rely on their crickets to be well gutloaded or the correct calcium balance.

In the summers you might be able to breed soldier flies outside.

If you absolutely can't supply live bugs I'd include something like the bug pie or omnivore mix repashy sells. Insects are like 65-80% moisture, it will be tricky to get enough oral hydration to make up for the lack of moisture in the food. (Baths are only useful if he drinks in them)

I know many people are against superworms as a staple but in my opinion, they are better then any canned insect. They keep for a long time and don't smell/make noise. I dislike crickets and am allergic to roaches so I feed supers, occasionally silkworms.

Thank you for your help everyone! My thoughts on proper insect feeding are ongoing, but for now he does love the canned crickets, and I'll make sure that we give enough calcium suplements as well. He has an exo-terra UV light, so no worries there. That bug pie from repashy sounds great, maybe we'll try that once our current supply is used up.

I have continued giving him baths, and he has been drinking during them since he was just a few months old, and today I saw him by his water dish but it was all evaporated so I took it out and filled it up, and he immediately started drinking from it. He hasn't ever done that before so I'm really glad that we have another item to the list of the things that he gets his hydration from!

again, thank you for all your help. Any other suggestions would greatly be appreciated.

Taterbug":1k2191uo said:

Flukers has serval products that don't live up to the promises of their packaging. I would not rely on their crickets to be well gutloaded or the correct calcium balance.

In the summers you might be able to breed soldier flies outside.

If you absolutely can't supply live bugs I'd include something like the bug pie or omnivore mix repashy sells. Insects are like 65-80% moisture, it will be tricky to get enough oral hydration to make up for the lack of moisture in the food. (Baths are only useful if he drinks in them)

Click to expand...

Taterbug, thanks! The soldier flies are intriguing, do you know of any good tuturials on how to set up a breeding colony?

And if I'm guessing right, you would breed them for the larvae to be the feeder, not the mature fly right? I can't imagine Peppi ever catching a flying target... :lol:

someone mentioned the other day that soldier flies are quite good feeders , the flies are large and slow moving and their beardie love catching and eating them, so the maggots , pupae and flies are all useful as lizard food.

There are a few guides out with DIY info for bsfl composers. They are really popular with chicken keepers and fish farms.

The flies are good feeders for enrichment but may only be interesting to younger or more active dragons. Don't hurt to try, pepper had never been interested in them but when I had a tarantula she loved them. The adult flies are not high on calcium like the larvae tho.