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Feeder & Feeding Questions

paulv

paulv

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I am not sure if this is the thread to post the question but here goes.

When you feed your leo's crickets, mealworms and roaches, and anything is left the following day, do you put the left overs back with all the other feeders or do you throw them away?

Can this cause parasites and other disease to spread through out your collection?

Obviously I will not "share" feeders between animals that i DO know that is sick, but in general.

thanks

paul
 
I usually put all the left over bug back in the feeder tubs. I haven’t had problems with it. However if I have geckos in quarantine they have their own feeders as well as everything else.
 
excellent question!

I am extremely fastidious and always lean towards the side of caution, so I throw uneaten feeders away. I do not allow anything from one enclosure to go into another. The vast majority of parasitic infections as well as bacterial infections are spread via oral/fecal contact, and infections such as pinworms and many pathogens can originate in feeder insects.

For example, let's say one of your geckos eats a cricket that is carrying pinworm eggs. Now, the infected gecko drinks water from the water bowl that is shared by it's breeding group, and the water is now infected with eggs which could in turn spread to the other geckos in that enclosure. Also, the original infected gecko defecates in the corner, and uneaten crickets eat the feces which are in turn eaten by other geckos. Ewwww! Now the potential for infection goes even higher.

I would much rather treat only the geckos in that particular enclosure for pinworms than to treat every gecko I have, or try to put out fires as they pop-up in other colonies. Since I do not raise my own feeders, throwing out a few uneaten 1-cent bugs is much better than taking the risk... and trust me, this comes from experience!
 
Leftover feeders from sick geckos get frozen then thrown out. Leftovers from anyone else gets fed to the garbage can i.e., my huge female tokay, heheh. She's a monster eating machine and she's never turned down a meal, even if she just ate several meals. I know its not too fair to her, but it's safer for the rest of my animals than tossing the leftovers back into the feeder bins.
 
Any left over mealies and crix i kill and throw out, i also do not use the pupaes that are found in food bowls for mealworm breeding.

Insects are so cheap by the 1,000's, so why risk your leopards lives over pennies in feeders?
 
I throw them out too, I get mealies 10,000 for like $36 and that last 6 weeks I guess, never really paid attention since I got so many new leos in January. I also dump the mealie dish every Sunday when I take all the tubs out and all the hides, dishes etc and virosan them, so any uneaten even though they did not escape are still thrown out. I only feed crix 2 times a week, on Sunday with freshly virosaned tubs and on Wed after I do a "quick clean" so hopefully the crix don't have any poo to eat.

I also have 1 girl that just has to poo and pee in her water dish so I take it out every am and replace it with a new one so she doesn't drink from a nasty bowl.
 
Parasites

Are these parasites not very host specific?
I think that pinworms and other parasites may have a better chance to survive in crickets than mealworms, but that is just a guess. It looks like the cheapest solution in the long run is to throw away whatever was not eaten then.

thanks
paul
 
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