A Picture of HEALTH? Buffets for leos?

I am personally starting to re-think my idea of a "healthy" leopard gecko. With a recent loss of a prized animal it got me thinking. Its actually directly related to our own lifestyle alot of us live here in the U.S. and other afluent countries. In this country and in many others everything is Super-sized. Food is available in abundance. Many of us take in way more calories than what our bodies actually need for our bodily functions and energy needs. To counter act this we must get some form of excersize regularly or we end up carrying excess weight. Now don't get me wrong I like to see nice big, robust leopard geckos. To some extent I do believe that in the most part a healthy leopard should have some fat reserves. What I do know is that we have gotten so good at housing and caring for our beloved animals we may be over feeding them and reducing their lifespan. I also think our own convenience is comming into play here. At least in my situation I think it has played a role. Let me explain. Its alot easier to order mealworms in bulk and place these nice Buffets infront of our leopards that require minimal effort in order to feed. Zoo's have long known that in order to keep animals healthy and stimulated activity is needed. Thats why their food is often times placed in creative ways so the animals have to work in order to eat. In this regard I am starting to think that crickets are probably alot better food source for our leopards. They may be a little less convenient for US but I am thinking they are ALOT better for our animals. Many times I have watched leopards "Hunt" for them. It takes effort to catch a nice healthy cricket. As I am sure many of you have noticed its not a gauranteed meal either. Sometimes the prey gets away albeit only briefly but it still encourages the hunt, and hunting means excersize, increased heart rate and mental stimulation. I have been feeding mealies as a mainstay for years because it was easier for ME! I am not saying we shouldn't feed mealworms or thats its necessarily a bad food item. What I do believe though is this. With some of our leopards this ,"buffet lifestyle" is just as detrimental to their health as our fast food high carb and fat diet is to us Humans. Just my observation. I could be way off base. Let me know your ideas.

another example would be the under/over weight charts of dogs or cats you see in vet offices. Granted it's easier to exercise a dog or cat, but the same healthy "robust" look should apply.

This same topic is one I've posted about on another forum, years ago albeit, and got bashed for the similar thinking.

What my LARGEST concern is, are breeders and private pet keepers getting their hatchling animals up to adult size at 4-6 months and breeding them at 8-10 months. But after all, it's all about getting the almighty buck. Many of you reading this won't admit it, some will even argue it, but in the long-run is may still really be the whole reasoning. What does this rapid growth do in the long-term consequence? You can view this as hearsay, but I've been told my a credible source that a certain monitor breeder gets his ackies breeding at 4-6 months and females only live 4 years from all the egg production. That's depressing! Most of these small lower food chain herps we keep will take up to and over 1 full year to reach breeding size. For example, out here you don't see TX banded gecko hatchlings and other small lizard hatchlings until about July. Even with our temps being favorable than other areas in the US, these first hatchlings might be lucky to get in a good month to 2 month's worth of feeding before hibernation.

Anyhow, need to cut this here as I have a spanish exam shortly and then work. I might comment more later tonight.

Chris

some veyr intresting iew s far, makes me think og Veiled Chams. I think I've read females don't make i to 3rd year of egg laying cause they so pooped fro the first two years.

I agree with you. I think that obesity and lack of excercise is not a good thing. Although i'd rather have a very fat gecko than a skinny one. I feed my four leos a staple of mealworms. But none of mine have ever ate out of a dish for some reason. I drop a mealie outside of their hide and they come and get it. They have to chase them a little, probably nothing like a cricket, but they arent just reaching in a dish and grabbing them. Also, i think there are more ways they can get excercise. Like when you bring a leo out of its cage, they tend to crawl around on things and explore. Thats a great way to get them to excercise. There are more benefits (other than convenience) to going the mealworm route though. If i'm not mistaking, i think mealworms have been proven more healthy all around than crickets. Not to mention parasites that they can get from crickets. I dont think mealies are a bad thing. I will continue to use them, in light of this, and just make sure that they come out and get plenty of excercise.

Well, let's answer this question with posing a question first. How long are your leopard geckos living for you?

We have a male that we have had for 22 years and we bought him as a full adult. He is still producing fertile eggs as of last year. Many of our adults are at least 10 years old. Females will produce eggs at 15 to 20 years of age, easily.

We do not start breeding them until they are at least 2 years old.

We feed our leopards crickets, pinky mice every once in a while, and treat them to wax worms once in a longer while. We NEVER use mealworms. We feed them well enough that their tails are filled out nicely and the lizards have a nice solid, weighty, feel to them.

The biggest problem around here is that Connie gets attached to these old lizards, and even if we retire them as breeders, she can't bear to get rid of them.

Leopards living 20 years and beyond! I really think the whole mealworm issue had to be looked at much closer. I do think there is something to this mealworm thing. Only time will tell, but for now I have switched!

I generally do not participate in leopard gecko discussions specifically because I no longer keep them myself. I am however always interested when someone begins to aim their views away from the status quo so to speak and starts to reevaluate the way they perceive captive husbandry. This is the only way new knowledge will be gained.
I believe you are anything but way off base in this line of thinking. I rarely make my views known on the subject, but I have never supported the idea of mealworms as a practically exclusive diet for leopard geckos. It is a diet of convenience initiated by some of the larger breeders in my opinion, and therefore adopted my much of the masses who commonly emulate the practices of the more well known in their area of interest.

I always used crickets as the staple for my leopards, as that was before I began to maintain roach colonies. My reasons were similar to what you have outlined, I believe active hunting to be beneficial to the overall health of the lizard. I also consider mealworms to be an inferior food source. Among other reasons, it is easily observable that they posses a much less desirable ratio of digestable to indigestable material. Their bodies are proportionally much higher in chitin than crickets.
Similarly, I don't use the so called "turkey diet" at all for my monitors. It is another diet of convenience in which I fail to find any advantages over the use of live insect prey. The same is true of pellet diets for other lizards and tortoises.

I believe you are taking a good approach to husbandry. While I'm sure there are many who will adamatly defend their "buffet" style mealworm diet, there is simply not a large enough base of data to prove it is indeed a fully adequate method of raising leopards.
In truth, I would say very few keepers can make the claim Rich can of having a 22 year old leopard. The majority of leo keepers haven't even got 10 years in the hobby yet, and many of those who do replace breeders regularly and rarely maintain individuals in their collection for as long as 10 years.
Survival and reproduction alone are inadequate means of measuring overall long term health.

One other point I feel the need to address.

If i'm not mistaking, i think mealworms have been proven more healthy all around than crickets.

I am very inclined to disagree with this statement personally, but I would be very interested in knowing of any verifiable data that you may present in support of it. I am fairly certain that none exists, but I remain open to the possibility.
As for the exact nutritional analysis of feeder insects, Grubco is the most often cited source for this information. Their analysis can be reviewed here
http://www.grubco.com/Nutritional_Information.cfm.
As shown on the table, crickets are superior to mealworms in every catagory, less fat, more protien, more calcium etc.
In light of this information I find it hard to see what exactly would suggest that mealworms are a healthier food source.

I also feel that the possibility of any potential parasites that might be transmitted from crickets is minimal and of negligable concern in view of what I consider to be the benefits of crickets over mealworms as a staple in the diet.

i dont think its necessarily the mealies or supers......... but howq many and how often you feed your animals...... i feed mealies and supers mainly and offer them crickets several times a months and i also once in a blue moon offer a pink and also once in a while maybe once a month offer them waxies................ but i dont think its the insects i think its how often and how many we feed to them at a time................ also i think the supplimensa and gutloading we use also effect them.
because just like snakes, geckos can be power fed too and get fatty liver tissue diseas............. with snakes its not the prey item rather the amount and frequency of feedings.

No, i'm not sure about the mealworm being healthier than crickets idea. But that was the advice given to me when i first got into the hobby. Everybody on the KS forum at the time was pretty much in agreement about that, i dont know about these days. Would it be safe to say that as long as you gutload, you can be pretty sure your gecko will be healthy? I have gutloaded my my mealworms from the day i started using them. Its a shocker to find out that something you've been doing may not be benifiting your animal when you've had nothing but thier best interests in mind since day one. For me, it wasnt something out of convenience, but something i thought i was doing to help my leos.

Wow. As someone who should be owning their first leopard gecko very soon, I find all of this extremely interesting. I have asked advice from numerous people and have come up (form these people's opinons and experiences,) that there has been equal success with mealworms as with crickets, despite that mealies are twice as fatty, according to the source cited by Clay Davenport. Excercise must definately be a factor in this, that and gutloading, just to my logic on it all. - Not to meantion, I'm sure at least with breeding any animal it's an exhausting life - perhaps being overbred, underhandled and misfed all have little factors in this as a whole. I'd really like ot hear some more of the experienced keepers also comment on the possibility that gutloading mealies could constitue a better diet if coupled with exercise. An un-gutloaded cricket seems like what most stores sell, that probaly can't be as healthy for the leo either. Couldn't they, like people, have too much excersize? Get too skinny? Also, I'd like speculate on http://www.grubco.com/Nutritional_Information.cfm -if their information is to their own product because they gutload their crickets? Just a thought - they are a business, although I'm sure crickets wouldn't be as fatty as a worm. And it'd be interesting to see the effects of what people feed food items to gutload, there must be some differences there. I don't want to sacrifice my animal's well being for the sake of convenience, but some have even told me that crickets can be as convenient, if handled properly. In nature, I wonder if they would even get a meal every day - but it seems less than productive to compare captivity directly with nature because of all the obvious differences.


anyway those are just my thoughts..

[edit] Oh, and on Dr.Gecko.com there is some informatioon on the subject of feeding. http://www.drgecko.com/feedschedule.htm - It doesn't seem to shun mealworms, just sort of pushes gutloading. Just something to look at..