gray vs. white silkworms

[alvora]

Nutritional value and hardiness of gray vs. white silkworms has become a pressing issue in our home.
My chameleon, Limey, loves to eat silkworms. My latest batch was gray and he is not as interested. The gray worms seem mushy and not firm, with a weak grip rather than strong and quick, like the white worms.
Does anyone have info about the nutritional value of weaker worms?
I'm worried because this is our main source of food for Limey.
He will eat mealworms but nothing else seems to interest him.

 

[pssh]

Have you tried other worms? Or anything green/that flies?

Anywho, if you are getting the worms from the same people/place the likelyhood of them being a different kind of silkworm is not very great. However, if you are getting them from different places, it is possible (although not too likely) that you might have some different kinds of white/plain worms. They are all silkworms though. They would just be different strains (like zebra, normal, pink, etc.)

 

[alvora]

Thank you for replying. I have tried many different kinds of worms. He would starve himself for three days and then I would give him mealworms. I don't like to wait any longer than three days.
We do use the same supplier for all of the silkworms and other worms we've tried. This is the first batch of the weaker gray worms. I've written to them but no reply yet. My guess is they are getting questions from others besides me. They'll fix the problem. In the meantime, I keep my worms at about 84 degrees on fresh chow every morning (I bought from the worm vendor).
I haven't tried any flying bugs. What have you used?

 

[alvora]

The supplier replied, they call them reverse zebras.
They say no one else has had trouble with them.
They will provide the regular and zebra silkworms in my next purchase.
I'm surprised that no one else here has seen the reverse zebras.

 

[pssh]

What is a reverse zebra? The 'reverse zebras' I've heard about are the mostly black worms with white lines.

How old is your chameleon?

Safe butterflies/moths, house flies, blue bottle flies, etc. Roaches that fly are good too.

 

[chendy]

pssh roaches that fly!?!
im too scared of that to even consider it as a feeder lol

 

[Trin]

We've had a lot of luck with Dubia, each of our chams that are large enough to eat them (or that we have dubia young enough to feed them) typically grab them first, chew, and then go for the other food. Also, hornworms are awesome, and they do contain a lot of water, but maybe if your guy likes silk worms, he'll consider those as well.

 

[pssh]

Well, they are tropical, so they tend to die from dehydration when they are out of their enclosures too long.

 

[alvora]

He didn't like the hornworms. However, I took the bulk of them to my favorite pet store with lots of reptiles and they fed them to the biggest lizards they had and it drew a crowd! The big lizards devoured them with relish.
Limey's almost 2 years old.
I find the Dubias interesting but my family will not go for that.
Yes, the reverse zebras are the gray with white stripes. Mine didn't do well. I trust my vendor to supply us with the regular zebras and normal silkworms from now on. They've always served us extremely well.

 

[chameleoman]

Yes reverse zebras aren't that popular even though they are very nice it could have been a bad bloodline maybe and came out wrong but I do breed my them myself and I have bred pure whites which are very nice when they hit the three inch mark but I have a batch of 100 zebras I got them from florida. And not ONE was dead they have a much lower die off right and are a bit hardier but you can determine the sex of the species very easily the black striped ones are the females and if you ordered zebras online then the white ones are the males and black striped ones are the females