What are you favorite feeders?

I always used crickets, mealworms, superworms and a few times a year wax worms.

With so much talk about silkworms being so much better, I wondered who preferred what feeders?

Id like to give silks a try but it seems that the chow has a nasty smell while being cooked and Im not sure if my family would appreciate me stinking up the house......

I've been using silkworms for a while now. The good side to them is that they have no smell (except for their food), they stay in one place when you place them in the cage, I've heard that they have more protein than a cricket, they can be dusted and they don't make any noise. The bad side is that they eat non-stop so they require constant feeding, they grow at a very fast rate so if you get a large quantity you end up with some that are too large to feed to anything, well anything that I raise, also you can't gutload them because they only eat one thing. At one time I wanted to change over to feeding them primarily but now I'm having second thoughts. I like feeding them along with crickets though and will probably continue doing so.

Jerm

How bad does their food smell, Id really like to try them!

Howdy,

I don't mind the smell of silk food much at all. It reminds me of green tea. It is a potent smell but not a particularly "bad" smell...

My chameleons will eat silks and supers much more often than crickets and roaches these days. Whenever I'm rehabbing someone else's chameleon that is still eating, they seem to really love roaches. It's probably the change of diet from crickets to anything else. Roaches: Lobster and Orange Spotted. No more hissers - just didn't see the point of having them too... Occasional waxworms, hornworms. Skipped mealworms with supers in their place.

The smell really isn't too bad, if you don't like it you can buy the food already made or grow a mulberry tree also. I use the vent above my stove and I barely even smell it.

Jerm

I may give it a try, my 6 year old has allergies and asthma, so we can't even use scented soaps and cleaners. I had heard that it was a harsh buring leaves smell when being cooked.

The precooked would actually make it not worth the while for me. I go through 10,000 meales in 6 weeks for $43 (pretty cheap).

I didn't notice a burning leaf smell, it kind of has its own smell. I can't really describe it. It did remind me a little of green tea. You could probably grow a mulberry tree in North Carolina. I thought about growing one here in FL in a container so I could take it when I move. My dad lives on a farm in KS and has mulberry trees everywhere so I'm going to have him ship me fresh leaves as soon as they have some.

Jerm

We do have Mulberry trees here, I could get leaves in the summer and fall.

Originally Posted by dragonflyreptiles

The precooked would actually make it not worth the while for me. I go through 10,000 meales in 6 weeks for $43 (pretty cheap).

However, in both food and nutrition wise, one large silkworm would equal up to maybe... 25 mealworms or so.

My chameleons are all fed silkworms, and receive crickets for one week, every two weeks in addition to the silkworms. The very odd butterworm, and some get a rare pinky or two.

Will, I have all geckos right now so the silks would have to be fed out at a small size. Thats one reason I am thinking of getting a new trio of veileds so they could eat the larger worms. I sold all of mine off last fall

I use crickets, mealies, supers and pinks now and wax worms a couple of times a year.