Another thing to consider in the vitamin D picture...

[jamest0o0]

Right now I am attempting to grow out my dairy cow isopod culture as rapidly as possible so that I may begin using them as an additional food item being that they possess an exceptional calcium to phosphorus ratio, plus my chams really seem to love them. I am personally not a big fan of supplements and have been advised against their use with chameleons whenever possible by both established exotics vets and professors/lecturers at the OSU veterinary school. Essentially no supplement has been thoroughly tested for efficacy in providing chameleons with micronutrients. This is coming directly from the mouth of the exotics vets/professors. They did concede that plain calcium is the safest and due to the lack of variety in commercial feeders it was necessary during the primary growth stage. They instead recommended using preformulated reptile food as a secondary gut load to fresh produce due to the fact that it has been more rigorously tested and proven to provide proper nutrition. Thus far in addition to the obvious fresh produce, bee pollen, and honey I've also used Repashy crested gecko diet and T-Rex Tortoise diet to enhance my dubia colony's nutritional content and gut load value. I also provide the tortoise diet and bee pollen to my BSFL(my chams do not readily consume the larvae but the love the adult stage flies). Mazuri and Pangea were considered reputable brands as well.

Unfortunately their favorite food items are still Silkworms and Honey Bees, but after a mishap I am reluctant to provide them with the latter. Instead I just pull pollen from my hive on occasion or procure it from locale keepers. I was lucky enough to have an exceptionally massive swarm show up on the property, so I went and purchased a weatherproofed insulated Layen's hive from a local keep/craftsman and was able to locale the swarm cluster containing the queen and placed her in the hive. This was about 2 months ago, I think, and they have since done extremely well(very thankful). They started off occupying 8 frames but have now filled out 16. Yesterday another massive swarm showed up and I was able to locate the queen and I now have them housed temporarily house them until I procure a second hive tomorrow. Thinking of using this hive specifically for pollen trapping.

Isopods and snails were my calcium rich feeders. For isopods, you may want to give porcellio ornatus a try. They get very large relative to of the others… not quite the size of p Hoffs, but close. They breed so much faster than all of the other giant species and aren’t as sensitive(though they do still need the substrate on the dry side). They also eat a ton, you can place food in and watch them run over to it.