Worm Keeping

[herpfreak]

I have done all of my research about beardies... I'm finally getting one by early January!

I have read all about keeping crickets, feeding them, gutloading them, and dusting them, but I'm wondering if the same applies to worms?

I plan on using lots of silk worms along with a few other types. Here are some questions I've come up with.

1. Should I gutload them? If so, should I use the same bd pellets that I'm using to gutload the crickets?
2. Should I dust them with Calcium/D3 and multivitamins (Rep-Cal brand)?
3. Should I provide them with fruit or veggies to eat?
4. Along with 5 minutes of crickets, how many worms should I offer my 1-2 year old (not sure) beardie every day?
5. Do worms need a lot of oxygen? If I were to keep them in a little bin, would I need to drill holes?
6. Can I keep different types of worms together? For example, super and butter worms?

Thanks everybody!

 

[ashesc212]

Hi. Worms vary by type of worm. I'll go through a few.

Silkworms: These are VERY difficult to maintain and keep alive but they are SUPER nutritious for your beardie. The only way I could make it work was by buying several storage buckets and cutting a large rectangle out of the cover. From there I affixed a screen (you can buy at Home Depot). They need to be kept around 90 degrees and YOU CANNOT LET THE HUMIDITY build up in their enclosure or otherwise you will have a lot of dead silkworms. You need to keep the buckets super clean and free of their own poop because they are very susceptible to dying off from bacteria. One way to ensure the buckets are clean is by using rubbing alcohol then rinsing it out.

They will not survive very long without Mulberry food. All they eat is Mulberry chow. You can't gutload them with anything else. You can buy the gutload mixture from Mulberryfarms.com. It's really a pain...lol. Anyway, I make the mulberry mixture and then slice it up and put it on the bottom of their buckets. When the food gets dried out or if anything goes wrong I replenish it, and I make sure the bucket is clean.

Superworms: Your beardie shouldn't have these or mealworms until he/she is abotu 17" long. Otherwise you risk impaction. These need to be kept in special bedding that you can buy from the vendor. They also need a bit of moisture so I put a potato in their container with the bedding. They feed off of the bedding. It's not just wood chips there's other stuff in it.

Butterworms/Waxworms: These get kept in the fridge and basically you don't do anything to them.

To go back to your questions:
1) Answered
2) Doesn't hurt...especially if they are getting that and not crickets
3) Don't need to although I think superworms will eat them. The other worms won't
4) It's best to have a screened cover like I described for the silkworms
5) No, that would be difficult. They all have different needs.

Hope this helps =)

 

[herpfreak]

Thanks a million! Maybe I don't want to deal with silkworms. I will wait for supers and mealies, and I know wax worms are really high in fat... but what about butter worms? Are they nutritious?

 

[patrickb]

Stay away from the mealworms, they are not good for beardies since they have too little nutrition and too much chitin. Big risk of impaction with them. A couple a week would be ok, but not to be used as a staple. Butterworms are really fatty as well and should be more of a treat than a staple. They have a lot of calcium so are quite good in that respect. Use them as a treat much more often than a mealworm or waxworm, but again not a main staple.

 

[NegativeCreep]

Although, I wouldn't use butters as their only protein, I am considering using them a lot more often. They aren't high in fat at all. In fact, they are lower in fat that Phoenix Worms, Superworms and slightly lower than crix, according to these charts...

http://www.premiumcrickets.com/Butter-Worms_32.html
http://store01.prostores.com/servlet/thephoenixwormstore/Page?template=comparison

Here's one on wax worms, just for the heck of it!
http://www.the-lizard-lounge.com/content/insects/waxworm-care.asp

Hope that helps!

 

[patrickb]

Except that if you notice in that first chart, the calories from fat is 87%, which is why I think they are considered fatty. I never used them myself so can't provide real life results on them, I just know a lot of people consider them to be too fatty as a staple. Thus my recommendation for using them semi-often as treats, but not necessarily as a staple. Much more often than waxworms, but not daily like crickets. Maybe two to three times a week.