Rasing food for our lizards

[warhawk77]

We have a Bearded dragon(about 1 month old), a Leopard Gecko (5 months old) and I'm planning on 2 more Leopard gecko in a few weeks so I wanted to get out feeding system set up so we don't have to go to the store 3-4 times away for food.

We planed on raising meal worms for all our lizards but that is not working out as easy as I had hoped. Our bearded dragon (we are calling it a he until we find out other wise) is very picky on what he will eat. He will only eat 1-2 meal worms but if you drop a cricket into his tank he will eat 8-12 no problem. We tried to do meal worms one day and crickets the next but he just won't eat them. Our Leo loves meal worms so at least some one is eating the worms we are buying. We bought 200 meal worms and put them in a 2 quart container. We used oats for bedding/food and added carrots for extra food/moisture but after about 2 weeks they don't seem to be growing, with some dieing. I think our problem is we bought them from a pet store that keep them in the refrigerator. I think if we started with better stock it would have worked a lot better. With them dieing off and not growing we are just feeding them right to the lizards. I will need to get more make the raising thing work.

I started doing more research on crickets and over the weekend we set up what I hope will turn out to be a nice set up for raising crickets. Here is my set up

18 gallon Sterilite tub drilled about 50-75 very small holes in the top
cardboard for them to crawl around on
carrots and dog food for food
paper towel soaked with water
1 quart container with moist dirt for them to lay eggs in. (should have used smaller I think)
48-50 large crickets


Our garage normally gets pretty warm so it should be hot enough for them. I check them everyday. So far no dead ones. I plan on leaving the container of dirt in there about 72-96 hours then take it out. Then I will put the container in 2-3 quart container with heat and let the eggs hatch. After about a week they should start to hatch and I will just need to keep them feed and watered.

I'm thinking after a month I will have small crickets to feed the bearded dragon and another month they should be large crickets for the Gecko. If the setup works I will take pics and do a write up but if it fails don't want to get anyone else off on the wrong foot.

I know it's a pretty simple set up but any advice to a newbie?

 

[OnlineGeckos]

Looks like you're doing fine, but if I may, you should give dubia roaches a try. They're very hardy, breed like crazy, and your geckos and beardie should love them. They have all the upsides of crickets, without the noise, jumping, and random deaths. Just a thought!

 

[warhawk77]

I thought about the roaches but I can't get past the mental block of having roaches in the house.

 

[OnlineGeckos]

I thought about the roaches but I can't get past the mental block of having roaches in the house.

I had the same problem, I was actually afraid of them. After studying all the upsides to having the roaches, and how they actually are less likely to escape than crickets, I gave them a try. It was all "ew" and "yuck" for a few weeks but I'm glad I went through with it. They're great as feeders for geckos & lizards, and they are really easy to keep as a colony. It's worth trying if you can get over the thought

 

[warhawk77]

Thanks for the advice. I really hope the crickets work out but I'm keeping them in our garage which isn't attached just in case they get out. Or should that be when they get out.


I will see if I can find some one local that rasies the roaches and see if they will let me take a look at their set up.

 

[DrCarrotTail]

Mealworms grow fairly slowly. Seeing results from beetles takes 3-6 months depending on temperature. I started my colony almost a year ago in July. I have five bins going of various sizes and they are enough to feed my 12 adult gecko and 5 hatchlings fairly easily. I also supplement with dubia roaches - they are super easy to keep and I find them much more pleasant than crickets. Hatchling leopard geckos are ravenous and mine are eating 2-3 times what my adults do. I'm finding I'll probably have to buy some extra mealworms and roaches this month to keep all the babies fed.

I've never had one but I understand mealworms are not a good choice for bearded dragons. They can eat a lot in one sitting and run the risk of impaction if the chitin (exoskeletons) clogs up their systems.

Best of luck with yours!

 

[warhawk77]

Mealworms grow fairly slowly. Seeing results from beetles takes 3-6 months depending on temperature. I started my colony almost a year ago in July. I have five bins going of various sizes and they are enough to feed my 12 adult gecko and 5 hatchlings fairly easily. I also supplement with dubia roaches - they are super easy to keep and I find them much more pleasant than crickets. Hatchling leopard geckos are ravenous and mine are eating 2-3 times what my adults do. I'm finding I'll probably have to buy some extra mealworms and roaches this month to keep all the babies fed.

I've never had one but I understand mealworms are not a good choice for bearded dragons. They can eat a lot in one sitting and run the risk of impaction if the chitin (exoskeletons) clogs up their systems.

Best of luck with yours!

Thanks for that info. Maybe I didn't give the meal worms enough time.

The research I did showed about 75% of places said meal worms are ok for bearded dragons, ours just doesn't like them. Might be the taste or they don't move as much but he won't eat more then 1 a day and some times won't even eat the one.

 

[Treefolk]

Ya, I hear ya on the roaches, when I first got them and some adults were crawling up my arm... I was like ukkk. But as already said, the benefits outweigh any grossness. I find crickets to be worse; smelly, noisy, hoppy, generally hard to work with. Everything a roach isn't