ANSWER ASAP

Grasshoppers, yes.. to me the health benefits are worth the risk of pesticides.

Mine used to eat Flys and ladybugs till I realized both are a nono!

Flys eat rotting crap and ladybugs are supposedly poisonous. Luckily my Chams are OK.
 
IDK where people get the idea that it's worth the pesticides? Is there anything that shows they are going to live longer by eating wild caught? there are more than enough nutritious bugs to be offered and gutloaded to the point it's most definitely not necessary to feed stuff you catch. Sure some of the more experienced keepers that know the bugs are safe and from pesticide free areas can do this without problem usually, but other than for a little variety there's not much reason to. It's a risk for not much in return. I have 10-12 feeders on all sorts of different gutloads. I'm sure that is enough, and my chams are definitely too valuable to me.
 
Actually wild caught insects have a lot more minerals and vitamins that commercially raised feeders can't possibly have even with gutload. It's why we supplement with dusting. I mean chameleons in the wild don't need dusts. And it's much easier to over supplement with dusts than an insect who has it naturally in their system. No commercially raised feeders have any decent amount of vitamin A that we don't need to supplement for it... I have done the calulations.. trust me XD
 
I have to respectfully disagree, how many people have been successful without feeding wild caught? Sure you can go ahead and do it, but advocating it foe the masses is dangerous. They could be introducing pesticides(good bye kidneys, liver, etc), parasites, etc. Chameleons don't need dusted in the wild because they eat soil and bugs that eat soil. They are also very far from pesticides and such. The fact we CAN dust is a great reason for doing it over wild caught. I'm sure wild chameleons have problems all the time from eating random bugs, that's not something we necessarily want to replicate. Add some healthy soil to your enclosures and let your cham eat it for added minerals

Honestly I'd like to see a study where chams were raised off all wild caught verses gutloaded feeders like we have. I really can't see how bugs in the wild would have a more diverse diet than a giant list of organic veggies, fruits, seeds, nuts from all over the world. How many people here have beautiful, parasite free, healthy Chams without using wild caught? If it's not broke?

Edit: autocorrect btw mean no disrespect andee you know a ton and I respect everything you do and say, I know you know what you're doing, but I just don't think telling every *joe* that it's great to feed wild bugs. I'd never feed a bug here in Pittsburgh. Maybe I'm just too used to dirty cities though
 
Andee said:
Technically yes? Depends on if it was an actual grasshopper or a lubber... lubbers are poisonous. Also no pesticides?
Click to expand...

jannb said:
As long as they are not a bright color and if it came from an pesticide free area.
Click to expand...

What does the bright color have to do with it?

There's a large field behind my house, the will eventually be more houses, but until then it's just grass land and I see grasshoppers out there all the time. It would be easy for me to catch them to feed.
 
It depends on the species of insects. I don't recommend people feed wild caught insects unless they know the range they are getting the insects from and whether they treat the place near them. None of the places I collect my wild caught insects are treated with pesticides and I don't use insects that travel very far. Parasites can be found in captive raised insects in even the best conditions. It depends on how healthy and stressed the chameleon is depending on whether they can fight them off. And honestly you should look at what is in the soil of where those organic fruits and veggies are raised. Everywhere is full of pesticides right now, it just depends on how much is found in the produce on whether it can be considered organic. The insects out in the forest likely have a larger diet than you think. And the chams have a larger variety of insects. You may offer 10 or 12 in a week etc. But a single chameleon out in the wild can likely have around 20+ different feeders in a single week and those feeders can change close to monthly depending on the season and territory changes for each chameleon.
 
Every species of insect has different amounts of each nutrient so unless you're talking about feeding the same species of wild caught insect to the captive bred insects how can you know if it makes a difference jamest0o0?
 
That's not what I meant,
I'm just saying if there was a way, it'd be interesting to see a chameleon raised on all wild caught bugs verses what we have to offer in captivity. I know there are so many variables to this. I understand different insects have different nutrients. Playing sports when I was younger, I tracked my nutrition, I can appreciate that eating different meats, carbs, etc offer different benefits.

Why does a variety of what the insect eats in the wild even matter all that much though? For example with humans, we could eat kale instead of any other leafy greens and still be as healthy or more so than someone that ate 20 different kinds of leafy greens. Now add into the mix that some of those 20 different greens might be poisened, against the kale which is safe(hypotheticals). I could live a healthy life just eating the kale(as far as my leafy greens go)

That might be a bad analogy, but you guys are smart i think you get the picture. A variety of safe bugs and great gutload list is fine. If your wild caught bugs are safe, great for you, but most of us don't have that. We don't all live in the middle of the wilderness. most of us live near cities, trash, and god knows what. I've seen plenty of very experienced people here suggest it'd be a mistake to regularly feed wild bugs, but no one disagreed with them so old what the deal is here.

Edit: before you slam me for saying variety isn't important, I don't mean a variety of nutrients, I mean variety just for the sake of variety. Like why have 5 different seeds if one has the nutrients of all the others.
 
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I never recommended feeding wild insects unless you know the species or anything. In fact I go the opposite way of that. But you also need to remember, very few people have even what I would call is a decent gutload. And certain heavily relied upon feeders are very poor gutloaders. The thing you also need to remember is we assimilate foods differently than reptiles and especially chameleons. Sadly we make a lot of vitamins and minerals that are necessary for all life out of either building blocks to that vitamin etc. Or make it through several other ways. And one thing is most reptiles can't make vitamins and minerals unless it's in their food and sadly for some reason captive insects lack a lot of what their wild species have.

Also, just because a human seems perfectly healthy on a limited diet it usually isn't. Almost all humans have low vitamin D and C levels. Several have poor B levels and there are a lot out there that think dairy provides calcium, while most calcium it provides isn't absorbed, especially pasteurized milk, and it actually ruins your bones more than it helps.
 
jamest0o0 said:
That's not what I meant,
I'm just saying if there was a way, it'd be interesting to see a chameleon raised on all wild caught bugs verses what we have to offer in captivity. I know there are so many variables to this. I understand different insects have different nutrients. Playing sports when I was younger, I tracked my nutrition, I can appreciate that eating different meats, carbs, etc offer different benefits.

Why does a variety of what the insect eats in the wild even matter all that much though? For example with humans, we could eat kale instead of any other leafy greens and still be as healthy or more so than someone that ate 20 different kinds of leafy greens. Now add into the mix that some of those 20 different greens might be poisened, against the kale which is safe(hypotheticals). I could live a healthy life just eating the kale(as far as my leafy greens go)

That might be a bad analogy, but you guys are smart i think you get the picture. A variety of safe bugs and great gutload list is fine. If your wild caught bugs are safe, great for you, but most of us don't have that. We don't all live in the middle of the wilderness. most of us live near cities, trash, and god knows what. I've seen plenty of very experienced people here suggest it'd be a mistake to regularly feed wild bugs, but no one disagreed with them so old what the deal is here.

Edit: before you slam me for saying variety isn't important, I don't mean a variety of nutrients, I mean variety just for the sake of variety. Like why have 5 different seeds if one has the nutrients of all the others.
Click to expand...

Idk if you remember this thread, but here's some calculations I did...

Leos yeah, but I take my blue tongue and most of my species (like leos or chameleons) out and put them in a large rubbermaid bin/outdoor cage (depending on what reptile I am doing depends on the cage) with plenty of shade providing by like simple things in the bin/cage or by trees casting shadows outside. My leos only get around 30-45 minutes of sun around 3pm twice a week, which is still good sun time but the rays are less powerful. My blue tongue gets a couple hours twice a week. I can't make a permanent outdoor cage for my tort yet. We don't own my house and they don't really know about him, but we will be moving and buying our own house soon, so I expect he will get it soon enough. ^^

Ok for vitamin A in insects
Silkworms are the best source...

But I am sitting here do calculations of how many insects they would need (doing what my adult panther eats on a regular basis).

In one sitting they would have to eat 6 crickets, 3 superworms, and 2 silkworms to get even close to what they need daily without a dust (this all adds up to around 110 mg). But the thing is, you are supposed to add a dust to these insects. (I am going off what repashy's would be) So they would actually need closer to 440 IU/mg of vitamin A per day. Though it is fat soluble the body burns through it quickly. So to they would need at least 400 IU/mg to have some extra left over (I am guessing because I haven't done the daily needs of vitamin A for insectivore reptiles) to store up.

But this is of course with insects who are fed well and taken care of. Most people don't go above and beyond with their gutloads. They don't actually know what's going in their gutloads they are commercially buying and what does what as far as food.

So animal protein does make sense. Insects don't naturally carry a lot of retinol, and chameleons even if they do process beta carotene and such, they don't process enough to it where it keeps them from getting vitamin deficient.

(if you want I can provide you with all my data and math XD)

I don't have the data right now... but I can find it likely tomorrow if you give me a couple hours. Though this is only for vit a

Follow this link to find some huge nutritional differences as far as certain minerals and vitamins around pages 590-600
 
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