How Many Crickets?

[Jay_Bunny]

I'm planning on getting 2-3 leos. I was wondering how many crickets one leo can put away in a week? Crickets here are .08 a piece. Not too expensive, but I want to see what my food bill is going to be for these guys.

Also, I know to get cricket dust and calcium powder. What is a good schedule as far as dusting and not dusting? I know to leave a dish full of calcium at all times in the cage.

[mlededee]

it depends on the size/age of the leo but i'd say about 4-6 appropriately sized crickets per leo per feeding. if you also feed mealworms you can just feed crickets twice per week or so. if you feed crickets twice per week i'd dust each time, if more then every other time or so.

some geckos will eat more, some less. a good rule of thumb is to give them however many crickets they will eat in 10-15 minutes time. you may just have to play it by ear at first and adjust for your leos eating preferences.

[elevatethis]

They'll stop eating when they've had enough...4-6 crickets is about right.

Properly gutloaded mealworms are also a great food source for leos, contrary to what it seems like a lot of web pages say.

[Jay_Bunny]

Many people are telling me not to feed them mealworms. Some are telling me that if I do intend to feed leos mealworms to cut the heads off first, and feed newly moulted ones (the ones that are whiteish) so that they are easier to digest.

I was planning on breeding my own mealworms. I tried once before when I had my bearded dragon, but my mom threw out my mealworms.

[mlededee]

mealworms are fine for leos. some geckos cannot digest the chitin in the shell so they don't get much nutrition from them but leos can. if you want to cut the heads off it surely won't hurt anything but you'll have to make sure not too feed to many at a time or they will die before they get eaten. a varied diet is best--crickets, mealworms, phoenix worms, feeder roaches and occassional wax worms are all good.

[PythonWallace]

I've heard things to that nature about meal worms, but I remeber reading in a book about captive care of leos that one at the San Diego zoo? lived for over 24 years and was only fed meal worms. I doubt they only fed fresh molted, headless worms. Can anyone correct this information? It's been a while since I read that book. I used to feed all of mine 6 appropriately sized items every day, dusting every other day, with a calcium dish in the cage. And it is good to mix it up to provide better nutrition than any single insect could provide. Phoenix worms are great for added protein and calcium, a couple of wax worms every week or 2 for the fat reserves, small roaches, crickets and 1 day old pink mice are a good treat for adults, especially breeding females.

[Jay_Bunny]

Roaches sound interesting. My grandmother would have a fit.

First she would do this
Then this
And then maybe this too

But I'm all for a varied diet. I want to provide the absolute best I can for these guys. I hope to get them soon. No petstore around here sells roaches, so if I were to feed roaches, I'd have to breed them myself.

[mlededee]

start out with mealworms and crickets and get some phoenix worms and/or wax worms for them every once in a while and they should be just fine. some petstores are starting to carry phoenix worms, so if you can get them locally they are even better than mealworms--you could drop mealworms altogether if they eat the phoenix worms.

[Jay_Bunny]

I'll try and find them locally. If not, I could just order them online. Crickets, mealworms, and waxworms are readily available to me at the local petstore. Those won't be a problem. I'm probably going to breed mealworms just for the heck of it anyway.

Thanks for all the info!

[elevatethis]

I've heard things to that nature about meal worms, but I remeber reading in a book about captive care of leos that one at the San Diego zoo? lived for over 24 years and was only fed meal worms. I doubt they only fed fresh molted, headless worms. Can anyone correct this information?

Mealworms get a bad wrap because, often times, people are getting worms that have been in a deli cup in a store's fridge for long periods of time, and possibly longer at the distributor before they got to the pet store - so there's not much nutrition left and they are pretty dehydrated at that point.

Just gutload your mealworms - let them eat fresh veggies, fruit, etc, and keep them in some kind of good edible bedding, and they'll be packed with good stuff for your leos.