Diet Question

[Jay_Bunny]

I've had a leo before. I got her as an adult and she was already eating mealworms with crickets twice a week. She would put away 15+ mealworms a day and eat around 4-6 crickets on the days she ate crickets (dusted of course).

Now I have this young leo. She weighs 16g and she just eats crickets. I bought her from Just Lizards. He said I could start switching her to mealworms but how exactly do I do that? I can easily breed my own mealworms and I'm trying to get my colony started. Crickets I can't breed until my husband and I are in our own place and they are so darned expensive.

[Stewart_Reptiles]

Just have a dish of mealies available at all time and see if your leo goes for it or not.

Personnaly I never fed my leos any cricket, mealies are much easier to breed and I can leave a dish full in the enclosure.

[771subliminal]

all my leos have been fed waxworms, mealies, crickets and silk worms from the start. they have moments when they wont eat one of them for a few months but they get offord

[Jay_Bunny]

Well she eats crickets just fine. I offered her 4 last night. She ate two and I found two still in her cage. I offered her the other two by hand and she ate them. I didn't want to overstress her by dumping too many crickets in her cage. So with a leo that is 16g, how many crickets should I offer her per day while I'm switching her to mealworms? I was thinking maybe 4-5 crickets per day but also give her a dish of say 10 medium mealworms?

[771subliminal]

i use a dish that has slippery sides that the mealies pretty much just cant get out of but the leos have no trouble getting in to eat, and i just keep a bunch of mealies in there. they are free to eat as much as they want. ive had no trouble of them over eating or still not going after crickets when offord.

that said if you wanna feed just what they will eat you can start with 10 and then just see how fast or slow those go and adjust. like i said b4 mine have times when they just wont touch a certain food item for a month or so.

[Jay_Bunny]

Today I gave her 4 crickets to munch on and offered her two mealworms by hand. She ate them no problem. So hopefully she can start eating more mealworms than crickets. I'm going to give her a small dish of mealworms tonight before I go to bed.