Frozen food?

[danthesnakeman]

Is there any problem with feeding frozen/thawed crickets to a young tegu? Mine will eat prekilled crickets so I know that the fact it's dead won't be a problem. I read somewhere about freezing supposedly taking away nutrients, but people feed frozen rodents to snakes all the time. What are yalls thoughts?

[MMReptiles]

Why would you use frozen crickets and not live? Feeding dead prey all the time is not the best option and without that exercise of chasing crickets it can lead to obesity etc.

[danthesnakeman]

For cost effectiveness and convenience. I know that allowing them to "hunt" would be good, but I also know that lots of keepers use rodents but for safety sake use prekilled. So I don't think that everything has to be live, but where is the balence?

[Coleslaw007]

I've never heard of frozen or pre-killed crickets, or any kind of insects for that matter, barring freeze-dried. I would just buy them or breed my own, it's not hard. Better yet, breed dubia roaches. I've been told they're much healthier, and I can vouch that they don't smell, breed like mad, and pretty much thrive no matter what, even with some neglect.
How on earth DO you pre-kill a cricket anyway????

[Mike41793]

I second the dubia roaches idea. My friend breeds them for his leo and theyre great!

[danthesnakeman]

Haha wellll by prekilled it means I killed it getting it, the person who sold it to me said either it wouldn't eat crickets or didn't whenever she was there, so I tried a few from the yard. So it wasn't sold that way or anything. And it might be easy to raise but I don't think I'll be getting into that in the immedate future.

[Coleslaw007]

Haha wellll by prekilled it means I killed it getting it, the person who sold it to me said either it wouldn't eat crickets or didn't whenever she was there, so I tried a few from the yard. So it wasn't sold that way or anything. And it might be easy to raise but I don't think I'll be getting into that in the immedate future.

Oh goodness... Never, ever feed anything insects you caught outside, you never know what they've been exposed to. They could have any type of insecticide or chemical on them and they may well be carrying some type of parasite.

I'm telling you dubia are the bees knees....but much less fuzzy. They get a lot larger than crickets too.

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[danthesnakeman]

Oh goodness... Never, ever feed anything insects you caught outside, you never know what they've been exposed to. They could have any type of insecticide or chemical on them and they may well be carrying some type of parasite.

I'm telling you dubia are the bees knees....but much less fuzzy. They get a lot larger than crickets too.

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I know that those things were possibilties (but based on knowledge and my conditions I didn't figure would be to great a threat), but I'm now looking to purchase crikets anyways. Thank you though for your concern.