|
Care of Feeder Insects:
For
a downloadable MS Word document, please click
Here. This document can be freely distributed
in its unaltered form. If reposting on a website, please indicate where it
originated.
These are guides to
how we maintain, Gut-load, and breed the insects we use as feeders. Mealworms
are not covered, as we do not use them, and don't recommend they be used for
baby Bearded Dragons. By the time a Dragon is old enough to eat mealworms, it
will be big enough to eat Morio Worms, which are superior. The care is very
similar to that of Morio Worms, if you own other lizard species which can eat
mealworms without problems. Waxworms are very hard to Gut-load, so we recommend
you keep them refrigerated instead, to try to maintain as many nutrients in them
as possible from when they were raised.
Crickets:
** A
Photo-Guide to moving crickets without touching them can be found
Here **
Crickets
are pretty much a staple diet for Bearded Dragons. They have decent levels of
all the required nutrients, except Calcium and certain vitamins. Although
variety is best for Dragons, a Dragon kept solely on supplemented crickets and
greens would do fine.
Crickets
are normally purchased in clear plastic boxes (referred to as "cricket tubs").
Crickets from a petshop have probably been denied access to fresh food or
moisture for up to a week, so this should be your number one priority.
We keep
our crickets in plastic "Critter Keepers" or "Geo Tanks", with cloth held in
place underneath the lid, to prevent escapes. A substrate is not needed - it
will only cause a smell. We use two dishes for our crickets. One has damp
kitchen roll in, which is replaced daily. This provides moisture, and stops
crickets eating each other (they are highly cannibalistic when hungry/thirsty).
Fresh vegetables, such as leafy greens, carrot and other root vegetables are
placed in the wet dish, on top of the kitchen roll. This will help keep it fresh
for longer.
The other
dish is their dry dish. Crickets need a source of dry food that is rich in
protein. Tropical fish flakes, any crumb designed for hatchling birds, or ground
dog biscuits all appear to work well. Feeding crickets good food is part of the
process of "Gut-loading", which can make a huge difference to growth rate and
overall health of your Dragon. We also give our crickets vitamin and calcium
supplements, to get more into our Dragons. These are just added to the dry dish,
and will be consumed along with dry food.
We use
cardboard egg cartons to increase the surface area of the the cage, and to give
crickets places to climb/hide. The temperature should be kept slightly above
room temperature if possible - sitting the cricket cage on top of a vivarium, or
putting a heat mat under part of it does the trick nicely.
This is a
photo of a typical cricket setup that we use, showing egg cartons, fishfood, and
a shallow dish with wet paper towel and greens on it:
We don't
normally breed our own crickets, but it is not too difficult to do. You will
need adult crickets, in a correct setup, at a little above room temperature. Put
a bowl with 1-2" of damp sand in, for the females to lay eggs in. The sand
should be kept damp, but not too wet that it cannot hold its shape. Replace the
bowls every week with new ones, and put the old bowls in separate containers.
Adults will eat newly hatched crickets, so they must be kept separate. Keep the
babies exactly as you would adults, and they will grow.
Morio
Worms:
Morio
Worms (aka King Mealworms) are a nice addition to an adult Dragon's diet. They
are not nutritious enough to be a staple though, but are good for encouraging
weight gain, e.g. for breeding. We keep ours in the ventilated tubs that they
come in, with 2" bran in the bottom. Chunks of carrot are added for moisture
every few days - check that the bran does not get too damp, or it will begin to
grow mould. Morio worms can be kept "dry" for a few weeks, but this will reduce
their nutritional value, and cause them to stop growing.
We have
only bred Morio Worms once, due to the relatively low cost of buying them. They
are a tropical species, which pupate in cavities in rotting wood. The easiest
way to replicate this is to use camera-film canisters. Put a small amount of
bran (a few mm) in the bottom, along with a chunk of carrot. Put a full-sized
larva in each canister, and put in the dark. A lid is not necessary as long as
the canister remains upright. It can take a few days to a few weeks for larvae
to pupate. It normally takes 1-3 weeks for a pupa to hatch into an adult beetle.
Beetles should be housed in a similar style to crickets, but with damp moss in
the cage. They are a tropical species, so need misting twice daily with water,
to keep humidity high. Once mated, female beetles will lay eggs in the damp
moss, then die. Once the eggs hatch, put the small larvae in a similar setup to
the larger larvae. Keep them warm, and they will grow faster.
Locusts:
We use
locusts as treats for our Dragons. They do not live long at all without water,
particularly in the "cricket tubs" that they come in. For locusts, we use a
similar setup to our baby Dragons, except we use a heatmat instead of a basking
light. Fresh grass and greens are given daily, and they have a dish of wet
kitchen roll, like crickets do. We also offer fish food, although they will only
eat it occasionally. A few locusts eat an enormous amount of grass, and produce
an enormous amount of waste, so clean the tank regularly.
Here is
the setup that we use for housing our locusts. We have a heatmat attached to the
side, with some egg cartons, fishfood, and fresh greens and grass in the bottom.
Our locust tubs are tall, so the locusts have room to climb and jump. As locusts
are not usually cannibalistic, we house several sizes together in a single tub:
Cockroaches:
In summer
2007, we first started switching to cockroaches as a feeder for our adults. We
use Blaptica dubia cockroaches. Adults are around 2" long, so are a
perfect size for adult Dragons. We now have a decently-sized colony established.
dubia cockroaches cannot climb glass or fly, so they are one of the
safest cockroaches to keep. Being tropical, if they do escape in Britain, they
may be able to survive for a short amount of time, but cannot reproduce.
Adults
breed best when kept dark and very crowded, so we keep ours in an 18" fish tank
with blackout paper around the sides, and a lid with small, mesh-covered holes
for ventilation. We like to keep a ratio of 1 male : 4 females, so it is the
males who are fed to our Dragons first! Males can be distinguished by their
wings that run the length of their body. Females only have small, stumpy wings.
We cover
2/3 of the tank base with a heat mat, to keep a temperature of around 90F. They
are liberally misted with water twice daily to keep humidity high, and also have
a large dish with damp paper towel in. We stack egg cartons on top of the heated
area, to create a vertical temperature gradient. We feed them exactly the same
wet and dry food as crickets. Cockroaches are practically odourless, so only
need cleaning out every 1-2 months.
This is
one of our cockroach tanks, with a couple of egg cartons turned over to show the
occupants. Half of the tank is normally covered with stacked egg cartons, with a
dish for dried food, and a dish for greens, with a wet paper towel in the
bottom, at the other end:
Once
conditions are right, females produce up to 30 young every month. They are
live-bearing, so you don't have to worry about eggs. We transfer all of the
young into a separate, larger enclosure to raise them to adulthood. It is likely
that you will start your colony with 50 or so juvenile cockroaches. If this is
the case, don't feed any to your Dragons - let them mature and start breeding
before feeding any off. It can take anything up to a year for a colony to become
established to the point where it is self-sufficient, so be patient. Once you
hit that critical point, you have a supply of food of various sizes for all of
your insectivorous pets, which is pretty much free, and is actually more
nutritious than crickets. That is why we chose to switch to cockroaches.
Given the
choice between Crickets, Morio worms, and Locusts, almost all of our Dragons
chose the cockroach. When you add Wax worms into that, about 50% still choose
cockroaches, so the Dragons obviously like them a lot!
< Back to
Care Section
|
