Can i purchase pre killed crickets meal worms etc

[kingsandcorns]

This may be a stupid question but is there anywhere i can buy pre killed crickets and meal worms etc for my emperor scorpions and does this affect the nutritional value of the crickets?. I have found my scorps very rarely willing to kill their prey 1st. Also when they do prey seems to be alive for quite a while in their claws and i no it is how a scorpion kills but it is not a nice way to die for any creature, so if any body is aware of anywhere i can find pre killed i would very much apreciate it Thanks guys

[garlicpickle]

I never heard of such, but a short spell in the freezer will kill them.

[shep1979]

u can buy tins of dead insects from some rep shops i think zoo med make them, but i doubt a scorp will take dead crickets, in my view if u dont want to feed them live crickets u shouldnt have the scorps, it is nature an the way they feed

[Elsa]

what you could do, is feed them with long tongs, hold the cricket/mealie by its head and as soon as the scorp has grabbed it and is definately going to eat it, crush its head before you let go, i used to do that with giant mealies with my horned frog as they bit inside its mouth!

[jelly-bean]

Originally Posted by shep1979

u can buy tins of dead insects from some rep shops i think zoo med make them, but i doubt a scorp will take dead crickets, in my view if u dont want to feed them live crickets u shouldnt have the scorps, it is nature an the way they feed

as sed above zoo med do them, but u new be4 hand what you had to feed your scorp so if u werent happy with it why get 1 in the first place, its what they do in the wild.

[jartok]

everyone is right if you dont like the way they kill then you should not have the scorps or now at least sell them on - it takes my mantis 15mins to eat a locust and he usually starts on the body its nature and thats how they do it its same for the scorps

[ph0bia]

It's not nutritionally different to feed anything something dead or alive (ie, my tarantulas take live crickets, but if they were to take a dead one, it has the same nutritional value until it starts to decay), the question is why you'd want to do this.

1. Can'o "food"s cost more than an equivalent tub of lives.
2. They are SO much more difficult to feed to scorps or Ts (who rely on their preys movements to know they're there).
3. It denies your pet a basic natural need, the urge to hunt. These are predators, not carrion feeders.

[kingsandcorns]

AS i stated in above post my scorps rarely take live. I put them in the viv and they are usualy there the next day, however when i put dead crickets in they take them pretty much straight away. I also own reptiles that eat crickets and live foods so it is not necessarily them killing them it is the fact i often have to do it myself.

[Spuddy]

could you not just throw a few Crix in a co2 gas chamber every time you want to feed them to your scorp? ... i suppose its better than squishing their head with tweezers or whatever.

just my two pence worth.


Spuddy.

[ph0bia]

You have access to such equipment??

I kid, I know it's stupidly easy, but which would you rather die by? A slow, painful death by asphyxia... or... a quick, nigh painless bullet to the head. The cricket is instantly dead if you crush its head, not so with gassing.

Originally Posted by kingsandcorns

AS i stated in above post my scorps rarely take live. I put them in the viv and they are usualy there the next day, however when i put dead crickets in they take them pretty much straight away. I also own reptiles that eat crickets and live foods so it is not necessarily them killing them it is the fact i often have to do it myself.

As I said, they're predators by nature, and these creatures work almost entirely (arguably entirely) by instinct. It's entirely possible if you're handfeeding them, they've come to take from you by instinct and thus wait for prey to come close, which a cricket may not do in an enclosure. What do you keep the scorps in?