Home
Care Sheet
Visitor Photos
Product Selection Guides
Bearded Dragon Care Q&A
Forums
New posts
Search forums
Resources
Latest reviews
Search resources
Bearded Dragon Care Q&A
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
What's new
New posts
New media
New media comments
New resources
New profile posts
Latest activity
Members
Current visitors
New profile posts
Search profile posts
Help
Website Help Guides
Contact Us
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
New posts
Search forums
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Forums
Bearded Dragon Discussions
Feeders
Feeding dubia roaches critical care?
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
[QUOTE="Claudiusx, post: 1991787, member: 31715"] A reason your vet might not see it much could depend on the life stages of dragons he sees (along with the quantity.) Younger dragons obviously eat younger roaches. Younger roaches have been shown to have significantly lower UA levels than older roaches, due to UA building up over time. Adults (or large dragons that obviously ate way too many feeder insects to become full grown at 9 months old) that eat older/larger dubias are where we see it most often. It is the high levels of protein in a dubia's diet that increase their UA levels, not any specific food. Although casein protein has been shown to almost double UA levels over other sources of protein (no milk protein in your chow mix!) A low protein diet will help lower roaches UA levels. Here is a post of mine from another thread on the topic: [I]Even when fed a low protein diet, roaches still have high levels of Uric acid in their bodies. This is because roaches, unlike many other insects, do not expel their uric acid, they hold onto it for various biological reasons that are a bit more in depth than this needs to be. It stays in their body, for further use, and can be converted back into protein nitrogen when needed. But, they can't get rid of it like other insects can. When roaches are fed a high protein diet, they create even more uric acid. This can get to the point where the roach will actually die from it's built up uric acid levels. A low protein diet for the roaches is the best middle ground, but I would be more cautious on what exactly your supplier considers low protein. Many people feed their roaches a dog/cat chow mixture. Most dog food is 18-25% protein. So with that train of thought, would you consider half of that to be low protein? Say 9-12%? Still, according to one biochemist who oddly enough is also a roach expert, he says the magic number he shoots for with roaches is 4% protein.[/I] So the biochemist roach expert thinks 4% is a good number. I've found that getting too low effects breeding programs (not an issue if you're just buying roaches) Which is why I settled 6%. I've had decent success aiming for that percentage. Obviously there is more than one contributing factor to gout in dragons, a major one being hydration, but there really is no benefit in what i've seen to feeding roaches a high protein diet. [I]-Brandon[/I] [/QUOTE]
Verification
Post reply
Forums
Bearded Dragon Discussions
Feeders
Feeding dubia roaches critical care?
Top
Bottom