Cricket/Roach chow

[Scottsquatch]

I am definitely going to be doing my own feeder colonies and want to use cricket crack for my crickets and roaches. My question is do you only feed that or do you still feed veggies too? Also, how do the bugs get water if only fed the chow? I was thinking the fruits and veggies supply the water. Anybody care to educate a newb to insect colonies?

 

[JacksJill]

You are on the right track. Many people chop, mix together and freeze portions of veggies with a bit of water and feed that for gut loading and moisture. Some add an agar gel to that to prevent the insects from drowning in the melt water.
Some people add trays of water absorbing gel crystals as a backup water source.

 

[Andee]

I only use fruits and veggies but some people can't keep them fresh long enough

 

[kinyonga]

I only use fruits and veggies but some people can't keep them fresh long enough

Me too. Natural to me is what they need.

 

[Scottsquatch]

I think I'll use both so I can get some of the other healthy ingredients I can't get at the produce section. The water crystal things are not a gimmick? If not I guess I'll use that stuff as a back up water source.

 

[NickTide]

This is how we did it 15 - 20 years ago. If they ate it, you gave it to them. Lol. There was little info available. Before I go on, let me point out, there has been a ton of research in 20 years so take this with a grain of salt.

Dog food for protein and base of diet. For water we fed apples and potatoes. We gutloaded separately.

The bugs lived and never seemed to have ill affects on reptiles. I knew a big supplier of feeder mice who used dog food for them as well. He did say no red dye in food.

I'm just getting back into herps and feeders.

 

[Andee]

This is how we did it 15 - 20 years ago. If they ate it, you gave it to them. Lol. There was little info available. Before I go on, let me point out, there has been a ton of research in 20 years so take this with a grain of salt.

Dog food for protein and base of diet. For water we fed apples and potatoes. We gutloaded separately.

The bugs lived and never seemed to have ill affects on reptiles. I knew a big supplier of feeder mice who used dog food for them as well. He did say no red dye in food.

I'm just getting back into herps and feeders.

were you feeding tropical roaches back then?

 

[NickTide]

About 15 years ago I had lobsters and hissers. Lobsters were the big deal then. 20 years ago it was just crickets. I recently read somewhere to feed orange heads cat food so they don't eat wings.

 

[Andee]

Orange heads can get enough protein from an all vegetarian diet, and if you feed a low quality dog or cat food that's what you'll be feeding pretty much. What you don't know is how the huge amount of vitamins made for larger animals and mammals with completely different needs will affect your reptile or roaches. Trust me I don't even feed most cat food to my cats anymore and won't even feed dog food to my dog. That shit, especially these days has gotten a lot worse. It's easy to make a 20-28% protein diet with complete vegetation as the base. But OH needs both high humidity and high protein compared to most roaches and it's because they are a species that in my opinion does better with substrate, but most people keep them like dubia. They do "fine" that way, but they do not thrive.

 

[NickTide]

I wouldn't know where to start to get that much protein from veggies. Soybeans are one of the highest and they aren't as high as meat.

 

[Andee]

Maybe that's because most people aren't used to doing their own food products or gutloads, and therefore don't know how to figure out percentages like that. Most cat foods on the lower end don't go over 30% protein, roaches don't need that much protein and it is more detrimental for their health than most people realize. But then again I am not just breeding roaches to breed them super fast and grow super fast, I want them to have a good and normal life so idk how this will come across to most people. Most cat foods on the high end don't go above 42% protein. Which is why cat food is crap... anyway...

Veggies have a large amount of protein just by themselves, add healthy ancient grains that don't cause a lot of calcium reduction like most wheat grains do. And you get large amounts of complete proteins. But like I said most of the issues come from a combo of being kept to dry and not having enough constant food for OH. And honestly, it's pregnant females who do the most wing chewing, not males when it comes to OH and other Eublaberus species.​

 

[Andee]

I think it's actually more important for a protein to complete than the protein levels to be high, which not a lot of plants have complete protein chains, which means you have to get the correct ones, or you have to combine the correct ones to make one.

 

[Andee]

But I just added up most of my ingredients and I hit 30%, some of my other ingredients would subtract about 2-3% from it, but yeah. And I don't use soybeans.

 

[NickTide]

I started looking this up and though many sites do recommend feeding dog food, I came across a discussion on this site against it. They discuss the build up of uric acid. Someone also recommended alfalfa cubes. That sounds like a good and inexpensive food with high protein. What do you think? Rounded off with fresh veggies of course, but keeping the dry cubes as a staple.

https://www.chameleonforums.com/threads/high-quality-dog-food-for-dubia.85524/

 

[Andee]

I use the bulk of my dry diet as alfalfa, it has higher protein, but it has to be ground down. I also use various other things to increase the quality of my dry chow, so it actually becomes good enough to be called a gutload.

 

[Andee]

If you want the recipe pm me ^^ the list is a little long, but I cut it down to just the necessities for anyone who asks for it. My actual gutload/chow consists of like 25-30 ingredients