Mealworms and BD!!

[immortal]

Hey guys,
Today it was first time I feed my BDs mealworm,, I have 3 questions please.

1. Can u fill feeding bowl with mealworms and just leave it in the viv for them to eat whenever they feel like it. or do I have to take it back out after 10 min of eating like with crickets and locusts. as i know with locusts its as much as they can eat in 10 mins.

2. What should I gut load mealworms on?

3. Can you just feed them on meal worms as substitude for locusts and crickets? or are mealworms just as secondary or as treat? (I will still keep veggie bowl there

[Mikey_C]

I heard from somewhere that its dangerous to feed mealworms to beardies as they don't chew them properly, and the mealworms can eat through there stomach.

Can't for the life of me remember where I read it (may have been on here), but i've never risked it!

Someone else may be able to clear this up!

[immortal]

anyone have clarification on this please?

[monkeygirl]

some people on an american forum have fed there beardie nothing but mealies and they have been fine. the mealworm thing is a very very rare occurance and no one knows if the animal was in fact dead before the mealworms ate there way out which would make more sence. beardies do chew there food. at least mine does

[mummybear]

There are a lot of myths surrounding mealworms, but basically you should only really use as a treat as they don't have a great deal of nutritional value, also they are quite hard for young beardies to digest so should only be fed to beardies approx 14inch in length, other people may feel differently though so I think you should just find a few opinions and make up your own mind

[immortal]

so shall i just keep with locusts and give mealworms as treat then

[Catherine896]

Yeah, only use them as a treat.

[Blazin]

Originally Posted by mummybear

There are a lot of myths surrounding mealworms, but basically you should only really use as a treat as they don't have a great deal of nutritional value, also they are quite hard for young beardies to digest so should only be fed to beardies approx 14inch in length, other people may feel differently though so I think you should just find a few opinions and make up your own mind

yeah there are a lot of myths and not much nutrionally value is also 1!
i dont know a great deal about beardies but most leopard gecko breeders use mealies as a staple and they are really good for leos if they are gutloaded well.

[Zak]

Originally Posted by Blazin

really good for leos if they are gutloaded well.

Young leo's dont deal well with the high chitin levels though. And nutrionally they're 15x higher in phosphorus than calcium and relatively high in fat.

[mummybear]

Originally Posted by Blazin

yeah there are a lot of myths and not much nutrionally value is also 1!
i dont know a great deal about beardies but most leopard gecko breeders use mealies as a staple and they are really good for leos if they are gutloaded well.

See now that just proves my point , sometimes the info isn't always 100% so you have to make a judgement call plus go with what your particular rep wants, they soon let you know if they do or don't like something. My Harriet won't entertain waxies for example whereas you hear tales of reps becoming addicted to them (like chocs with humans LOL) so either she doesn't like 'em or she's worried about her figure