Canned Food??

ShawnBC · 10-01-04, 03:12 PM

On Zoo-Med website, there is a whole lot of food in can for different kind of herp, example: there's bearded dragon pelleted food diet and such, and there's also T-Rex offering a diet program for crested gecko. So my question is; is this kind of diet good for the animals, because they say they provide all the vitamins, calcium etc needed by the animal. Is it a good idea, or shoul I stick to crickets? Also, do herp would eat dead crickets or they absolutely want live crickets???

Thanks for the responses!

Linds · 10-01-04, 10:17 PM

No good at all. Those formulated pelletted diets are all wrong for the animals. They are all grain-based, which is converted to glucose in the body. These animals do not have a high-sugar diet, and as a result, can experience deficiencies, liver damage/failure, heart damage, and other such disease ultimately leading to their untimely demise. They also contain harmful preservatives and other additives that are know to produce tumours, etc. The crestie diets are actually commonly used and do not have the same formulation, however, I still prefer to keep reptiles on fresh, unprocessed foods.

All the pelletted feeds out there are just gimmicks for the pet guys to make more money off unknowing consumers, or those that jusdt plain want the easy way out

As for eating dead crickets, some animals will take dead bugs, but most insectivorous animals tend to prefer motion.

ShawnBC · 10-02-04, 08:19 AM

So, if live cricket are a must, do you buy them when your snake needs them, or you just buy them in big numbers and put them in a rubbermain, feed them etc, until they are ready to be fed to your lizard??Like, you buy 100 crickets, put them in a rubbermaid, and when it's feeding day for your animal, you take a handful and throw them in the enclosure and remove the uneaten one??

Sorry for my immense newbiness

HeatherRose · 10-02-04, 01:13 PM

If you're going to be talking about snakes, then snakes usually eat mice...

As for lizards, it's usually easy to buy a bunch of crickets (100+) and keep them alive with the proper diet (or commercial cricket diet that you can buy) and feed them off a few at a time to your pet. The rest all depends on what you're feeding...for my chameleons, I put crickets in a deep container and hold it up to them so they can eat as much as they want. For my crested geckos, I place maybe 5-10 in an enclosure at one time and shut off their lights. They'll hunt them all down eventually...

Good luck with whatever you get...

V.hb · 10-02-04, 01:21 PM

the bearded dragon pellet food is fine, actually. it actually has crickets in it, with a bunch of vegitation. I wouldnt use it as a staple, but used sparingly it wont kill anything.

Linds · 10-02-04, 07:26 PM

Regardless of whether they contained crickets, all the ones we used to stock were all grain-based (I still haven't seen one pelletted diet that wasn't), which is detrimental to virtually any reptile's health. As well as they all contained harmful preservatives, or as they were often labelled as antioxidants

Jeff_Favelle · 10-02-04, 08:30 PM

Quote:

So, if live cricket are a must, do you buy them when your snake needs them,

Most snakes that are in the reptile hobby do NOT eat crickets, LOL!!

Will · 10-02-04, 09:10 PM

Quote:

No good at all. Those formulated pelletted diets are all wrong for the animals.

Quite a few Beardie breeders out there use mostly pelleted diets(veggies and insects supplement the pellets). I seem to recall reading one breeders' page that said they feed pellets exclusively. Can't remember who it was off the top of my head, but if it comes to me, I'll post a link. I'm just curious, if it is so bad, why do they use it...?

Linds · 10-02-04, 09:33 PM

Beats me why anyone would use it regularily. I can understand keeping some on hand just in case you accidentally run out of food (those days where you are too sick to go to the store, or the weather sucks too much), but that's about it. Beardies feed on a diet of greens, some fruits/veggies, and bugs/small animals... the makeup and nutrient values end up being significantly different. Grains are basically concentrated sources of sugar, and if you look at most reptile's diets, they do not have a diet rich in sugars, and I can't think of any reptiles that feed on grains period in the wild. Not only that, but the sugars generally ingested by reptiles naturally are mostly simple sugars, not complex. Beardies generally don't even have that high amount of sugars in their diets to begin with compared to other animals that feed on fruits and veggies, and these diets are not suited to any one of them. When was the last time you saw a Beardie munching down on some wheat, rice, or whatever else in the wild?