Scared of the cup feeder

[Lintini]

Hey all,

So I brought home my nosy be on tuesday. He fell asleep on the car ride home and after I put him in his new pen we left him alone for the night.

The next morning he drank like a champ and ate like a champ too. My brother was hand feeding him crickets, mealworms and wax worms.

I had this great idea yesterday to suspend a feeding cup for the worms so he could eat them while I was away at school for the day.

Apparently he was scared shitless of the hanging cup and he didn't even move from his branch all day. He was darker in color.

I feel really bad, we took out the feeding cup and I let lose about 10 dusted crickets in their shake n bake. I also covered half the cage in a towel to give him more privacy. He keeps eyeing my bunnies though like they are little idiot ground loving freaks. I have free range bunnies in my room, they are litter box trained and all.

He's currently basking, and his color looks happy. I just want to make sure he eats well. Do a lot of you just turn crickets lose in their cage? Apparently he was caught in the wild so I think he would prefer that more? He does eat out of our hands though, just not today since he's pissed.

Any ideas or tips for feeding? Will letting lose the crickets be successful since they have lots of places to hide? I spent 75$ on silk plants in the pen...they could really hide thats why I wanted to cup feed

 

[Lintini]

On further reading I see that they don't like clear cups? I guess that was the problem. He ate a mealworm I set on a branch and some crickets.

<3

 

[aliguori]

Don't worry about the crickets hiding, they tend to move toward any type of heat source and will like all end up at the top of the cage closest to the heat source.

Trying to find crickets is good exercise too.

 

[BeBoSON]

I free range my crickets, when you dump them into the cage they usually chill at the bottom for a bit but then they all end up huddled where the basking light is. I'm starting to cup train my little guy. At first he was afraid of the cup,and run away from it. So each day I used a cup to dump the crickets into his cage. After about a month of doing so, he wasn't afraid of the cup any more and made the association of the cup having food in it. Now each day I put some crickets in a cup and leave the cup in his cage, so he can have his morning buffett. Then 10mins later I dump the rest of them into his cage, so he run around and catch them.

Also, what I've heard about clear cups is that when they go to catch food they can't tell that its clear and might over shoot their tongue and injure it. Again, its only something I've heard.