The role of insect as food

[Steeve B]

The role of insect as food

Insect are the perfect food source for wild baby monitors, because they feed on the world most energetic foods, grass and similar greens are very high energy foods, but needs to be eaten often as they are fast action foods, they allow monitors a low weight witch is important for arboreal movement and to flee predation, however we don’t feed our captive insect these much needed greens, rendering the role of insect less efficient by 10 fold, ok 5 if you supplement, this is why I only feed rodents, high fat and protein, its much much easier for a baby monitor to endure our husbandry faults when they have some fat stored, dehydration is less likely and an occasional skipped meal won’t be as detrimental.
The main reason insect are taken over rodents in the wild, is availability. Forget about the nonsense that pinkies aren’t nutritional, they are more so then any insect we have, and have more calcium then a many crickets, their mothers milk is passed to your monitor along with all the vitamins calcium and colostrums, not to mention fat and proteins This means even if you have all the best insects, if they aren’t plentiful your monitor will fail, he may even fail if your insects are nutritionally poor.

An under fed monitor will be unable to flush its internal parasite flora, and will end parasite infested, this will happen even with cb monitors, it’s the way of life some organism take advantage of weaker organism, microbial mutation is something science is only starting to understand, every organism that feeds on others organism will harbor a microbial (parasites) flora, capable of mutating from one form to an other, well fed monitors shed there parasites and always show negative fecal testing. We need to stop blaming the parasite, its our husbandry that’s at fault, I must have posted this several times, it doesn’t seem to sink inn.
too bad becaus this makes it so easyer

[skinheaddave]

Originally posted by Steeve B
well fed monitors shed there parasites and always show negative fecal testing.

Nonsense. Potentially true with intenstinal worms and the like, but not at all viable for parasites that establish themselves in the liver, lungs, other organs, subdermally etc. I agree with 90% of your post, but this sort of catch-all statement is self defeating.

Cheers,
Dave

[Jezabel]

I agree with this, it's seem to be also true with snakes. I bought 2 WC adult amazone tree boa. I never worm them cause there were eating great, gaining body weight and has normal bowel movement. I bought their feces to my vet a few month ago cause I'm planing to breed them. So before I put them together, I wanted to make sure they were clean. And both where. Same with my borneo blood.

[Steeve B]

The point is keep your animals decently and feed them right, and many health problems will be avoided, yes there’s always a chance for some nasty parasites attacking any organ of your animal, however a week host is an open invitation.
I don’t think discussing the infective stages of parasites or how to id Ascarid, Trychomonad, Kalicephalus, Pentastomid, Entamoeba, Capillaria and 50 others will help peoples improve their husbandry!
All I know is after years of brainwashing myself trying to understand parasitism, it all boils down to proper husbandry, so this is what I do, share my experience the most effective and simple way.

[rustysdragons]

CricketsMealwormsWaxworms Superworms Fly LarvaMoisture 68.9662.8960.97 58.91 69.02Ash 1.521.20 0.971.29 1.24Protein 20.7218.6515.4018.92 15.32Fat 5.7413.6420.1215.07 5.96Carbohydrates 3.063.622.54 5.81 8.46mg/100g CA 21.533.28 13.1410.80 17.73mg/kg Vit. C 105.9038.10 23.609.80 9.80Dietary Fiber 2.802.00 1.60 2.20 2.70Calories/Fat 51.66122.76181.08135.63 53.64

Well if this copy / paste works corectly this is what I ussually like to use for comparason in insect feeders.
I also use supplemental foods for the crickets for at least 4 days before they are used as feeders, IE natural vegetation and gut load foods.

As for parasites what we personally do is bring everything that comes through to the vet along with an isolation period of at least one month, But we also run a rescue and get many many ill herps in.
To each his own I guess, this way just seems to work very well for us.
Ok thanks
Rusty

[rustysdragons]

Ok that didn't paste correctly as you can tell, I'll try to figure it out.