oh my god! hurray!!!

[raebug2000]

yesterday i took figment with me to go get crickets ( she loves to go for bye byes) and the guy and the rep store ( called snakes at sunset....great place i might add) threw down some mealie....well figment RAN down my shirt to the counter top where the mealies were and ate all 3. chomp chomp chomp. i am just thrilled i bought $2.00 worth and fed her some this morning.very kewl. she's about 10 inches long. :jawdrop: :med8ball:

[Big Mike]

Be carefull...too many meal worms can cause impactation.

[Clownfishie]

Congrats I find mealies so much easier to work with than crickets -- no escapees, no noise, no stink... the list goes on. LOL

I feed all my guys (leos, pictus, trying on the cresteds) a main diet of mealworms/superworms with crickets as a treat (and for variety) every once in a while. I've never had a problem with impaction, nor have I talked with any (leo) breeder that feeds mainly mealworms who has...
I don't have much experience with beardies, but I can't see eating mealworms being a problem (except maybe in really young babies? although my babies are fed mealies too, just the small and preferably freshly shed ones)... I don't know, just my .02 As I said, I don't have much beardie experience so I may be way offline saying that eating mealworms won't cause impaction....

[drewlowe]

Mealies for leos is fine they eat lots of insects so for them it is fine.

Beardies on the other hand. Not so great. They eat alot of vegtables and shouldn't be given as much insects as you think. Every once in a while as a treat should be ok. but never as stable diet. The chitlin in the mealies can cause impactation in beardies. Wait for eyespy she can break down the reasons more than i can.

[eyespy]

Yep, beardies have much more trouble with mealworms in my experience. They have a very different digestive system, a big stomach and small, short, narrow intestines that are far more easily impacted than a leo's system. Plus beardies only produce acid in the stomach, the small intestines are alkaline and the large intestine is practically neutral so there's much less time for the mealies to get broken down during the digestive process. Leo's digestive system is acidic all the way through.

I never saw much reason to feed mealworms to beardies anyhow. The calcium to phosphorus ratio is miserable and mealies aren't very nutritious even when fully digested and most beardies never digest any protein source fully. The food just isn't exposed to stomach acid long enough to get broken down.

[raebug2000]

well, she may not have even liked them cause now she wont even look at them


:monkey: :medskelet

[Dragon_Slave]

Rae,
I would also not ever recommend feeding mealies to dragons. I have friends who feed a staple diet of about 90% greens and 10% freshly shed mealworms. Their dragons are much bigger and older than yours though. Anywho... I wouldn't ever feed mealies, it's just too big of a risk.