Butterworms don't have much calcium??

[hart24601]

For years and years I thought butterworms (tebo worms) had "twice the calcium of other feeders" as many sites say. They never gave any sort of reference to who did the analysis or the procedure. I found this article on pubmed from 2012:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/zoo.21012/abstract

It has good methods, such as sending 1kg of each feeder to a commercial lab for analysis and allowing the gut to be empty before analysis to reduce the effects of "gut load".

The surprising results is that tebo worms, aka butterworms, have hardly any calcium! I may have missed it if this article has passed around the forums, but it seems to have pretty large implications for chameleon keeping as many at least supplement with butterworms under the apparently false assumption that they have lots of calcium.

Soldier fly larva really seems to be a good source of nutrition for animals that will take them. Here are some other published nutrition articles.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/zoo.10031/abstract

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/zoo.20382/abstract

 

[Bush baby]

Good info.

Not really surprising. This hobby is constantly evolving, so new and more accurate info will continue to come out like this as the years go on.

 

[sandrachameleon]

good but not new info (to me anyways)
you may also find this link interesting: http://www.geckotime.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/table-large.png

but its not just about the lab numbers - Im told digestibility plays a significant role too. For example, hissing roaches (which are a great feeder - easier to gutoad than other roaches) contain very high calcium, but some of it is (im told) caught up in the exoskelton shell and gets pooped out/wasted. Soldier fly maggots are also sometimes hard for some chams to digest fully (but i agree are generally a good option). Whereas silkworms (ive read) contain an enzyme (serrapeptase) that may assist with calcium absorption, making them a bit better than their lab numbers would suggest.

Plus, gutloading does matter. And silkworms and butterworms (contrary to some statements on the forum) are indeed gutloadable with a variety of produce, to potentially improve their numbers.