Horns and Roaches

[JennaMarie]

Hey everyone! A couple of quick questions...

We have a few horns that have turned into pupae. Are these safe for our Panther Chameleon to eat? I know the exoskeleton of supers and meal worms aren't great for their stomachs after a while, so I wanted to make sure these are safe and digestible for him before we put them in his cage.

Second: we have successfully made a small roach colony (hooray!). Now my biggest question is what can we feed the baby roaches to make them grow faster so they can get to feeding size? I would LOVE to have a self-sustaining feeder colony. So far they've been getting collard greens and carrots mostly.

Thank you!

 

[maxttu]

In not sure about the pupae. The nymphs you can feed oranges, carrots, high quality gut loads like bugburger and dinofuel. Those last two will grow them up nice and healthy.

 

[fluxlizard]

I have no experience with feeding pupae, but they are probably fine.

3rd item of preference for wild flap necked chameleons in a recent study was pupae/larvae. I have no idea why they threw those 2 in the same category, nor how chameleons would find pupae in the wild. Nor do I see where the study identified what sort of larvae. Presumably larvae could be catterpillars, mealworm looking beetle grub that have a harder shell or softer bodied grub from beetles or even fly larvae- kind of a bad grouping there on the part of those doing the study.

See my post in this recent thread for link to the study-

https://www.chameleonforums.com/interesting-article-flap-neck-ecology-94123/

2nd item of preference was beetles- first was grasshoppers.

Looking at the numbers beetles were eaten slightly more than 2/3 as often as grasshoppers. Looking at the volume of the diet rather than number of beetles vs grasshoppers- beetles were about 11 percent of the total diet, grasshoppers about 69 percent, larvae/pupae about 5 percent.

Dealing with exoskeleton is what chameleons do for a living. Healthy chameleons have no problems with it.

I've been safely feeding mealworms and superworms as part of a varied diet for 20 years.

The key word there of course is varied. Without variety health is much more likely to be compromised and then problems dealing with exoskeleton might creep in. Along with other problems.

A few pupae or mealworms aren't going to be a bad thing and might be a good thing for mental/emotional stimulation if offered irregularly and results in an excited or curious lizard.

 

[fluxlizard]

Oh as far as the roaches go- I don't know if I have any good tips for growth rate as far as diet goes- but temperature is very important for growth rate. Temps in the upper 80s will result in rapid growth rate.

 

[JennaMarie]

Hmmm. Ok, not sold on the pupae yet. They make me nervous! Not to mention they move in their shell which freaks me out a bit. Anyone else have any input on these!

As for the roaches, they're on a warmer so they stay nice and toasty. I'll pick up some oranges this week and see if it helps them sprout up. Any other food/care recommendations?

 

[camimom]

Don't feed the born cocoons off.
Let them continue and keep them warm and soon you will hve horn moths that you can feed off or keep to breed more