Rodents eating mealworms?

I was just discussing on another thread the ease of raising mealworms for leopard geckos. I don't keep Leo's anymore, but raising mealworms was pretty easy to do. I know that wild rodents eat a lot of insects as part of their natural diet and I was wondering if anyone here fed mealworms to their rodents? Do you think this would this be a valuable addition to their diets? Would this just be an occaisional treat? Would they ignore them? Would the worms just crawl under the bedding and get thrown out with the old shavings every week? Would they help keep the cage cleaner by eating rat poop? I'm thinking about giving this a try just to see what happens... Anybody have any experience with this?

Mark

Sounds like an interesting idea! I would think that even in the bedding the rats could smell and find them. I suppose as long as the meal worms are raised on nutritious foods they would be a great little pack of protein for the rats...I'm sure a nursing female would relish in them.

I use to give my pet rats meal worms back around 4-5 years ago. ONly did that because I had a hedgehog who loved them. My rats LOVED meal worms also. I only gave them as a treat.

Mine LOVE mealworms, its the best treat I can give them. I try to give at least several a day to nursing females for the extra protein, fat and moisture content.

I don't think there is any way they would be ignored. If anything, they will probably fight over them if you don't hand one out to everybody.

I also occasionally give them to my breeder mice and ASFs, with the same type of reaction. Deformed darkling beetles sometimes get fed off to the ASFs, it's funny watching them stalk them in their cage.

My opinion...you could, and the rodents would enjoy it, but do you need to? It seems like a bit much to devote space to for treats. I just give my guys a few of the sunflower seeds purchased for the bird feeders, for treats, or some vanilla-flavored dog biscuit. They eat lab blocks, which has all the protein they really need.

As long as they have a decent protein source in their diet already, insects aren't necessary. I can see raising them if you have other things that will eat them, like breeding finches, or lizards, but just for rats? O_o

That having been said, if you want to, I'm sure they'll enjoy it...

Mark, if you don't mind raising meal worms and the rats get an occasional addition to their diet - well why not. The rats will likely get some stimulation having to hunt a bit for their snack and it never hurts to enrich their existance/food sources since they in turn provide so well for our snakes. :)

interesting!!

I only started breeding them as a backup food source for my tarantulas, for when I run out of crickets.
They bred so well that I ended up with literally thousands of mealworms. I've refrigerated more than I can use and the rest, its either let them grow to beetles and have millions more in the next generation, or feed off as many as I can to the pet rats and the breeder rodents.

Thats kind of what got me thinking of it. They were really easy to breed and took up very little time and space, but you always ended up with WAY WAY more then you could use. If the rats will eat them, then I could feed all of them off and not waste anything.

Mark