mealworms for baby chams...

At what age is it ok to introduce mealworms to baby chams diet? I have two 6 week old baby Veiled's.. they have been eating small crickets (bigger than pinhead... about 1/4in i'm guessing). Picked up some mealworms for them this weekend... they can't seem to eat them tho! The meal worms are small but maybe still to big for the baby chams... they have (unsuccessfully) tried a few times to fling tongues to eat them, but end up dropping the worm =\ Should I just remove the worms from the enclosure, or give them a day or two to keep trying? Are they too young for mealworms??

In my opinion they are too young.... wait after 4 to 6 moths to introduce mealworms.

Thanks for the reply.... I will wait till they get a little older then =)

Would soldier fly larva maybe be an idea for variety? I don't know, I'm just tossing that out there. They are available very small and they are soft bodied. They're known for a lot of calcium which seems like something young animals would benefit from.

Mealworms should never be introduced into a chameleons diet. Superworms can be introduced when the chameleon is large enough to consume them, assuming you have a Veiled I would say about 6 or 7 months.

I've been using mealworms as part of a well rounded chameleon diet for 20 years.

Ferguson used mealworms and crickets exclusively to raise several generations of panther chameleon in his lab.

Mealworms were selected for use by him because they gutload calcium more effectively than crickets.

When considering a diet you have to consider the diet as a whole, not as if mealworms were the only food item.

I feed tiny baby mealworms to tiny baby chameleons within the first few days of the baby chameleons hatching. I also feed tiny baby roaches (lobsters) and tiny baby crickets and flightless fruit flies to my baby chameleons.

Variety is key. Mealworms can be a valuable part of that variety.

Note- it sounds like your mealworms are too large for your chameleons. I breed my own mealworms so I have access to baby mealworms that are super tiny for baby lizards. You should wait on the worms you have until your lizards are larger.

Lizardlover said:

Mealworms should never be introduced into a chameleons diet. Superworms can be introduced when the chameleon is large enough to consume them, assuming you have a Veiled I would say about 6 or 7 months.

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I disagree. I include mealworms in the diet of my chameleons from a very early age (2 weeks old) through to adulthood. When gutloaded, they are as nutritious as superworms. I dont adovcate using too many of either larva, due to the chinton and fat, but if they make up less than 10% of the chameleons diet they are a perfectly acceptable feeder chioce. Variety is important.

Supergirl said:

At what age is it ok to introduce mealworms ... Are they too young for mealworms??

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In my experience, Appropriately sized Baby superworms and baby mealworms can be offered from when a chameleon is a couple weeks old. Sounds like the larva you have are too big for your chameleons. Soldier fly larva (pheonix calci worms) are also an option, if not over used, for small chams

i feed my 2 month old vieled 2 mealworms ever other day to provide a variety. i use crickets as a staple and add a couple pheonix worms (soldier fly larva) every day.

if you get mini mealworms they should be small enough for a baby to consume.