All worm diet bad?

[ICu35]

Me and my girlfriend just came back from our best regional pet store and they told us an all worm diet is bad for our 9 month old male veiled, they claimed it could cause runny stools and even prolapse.. Is this true?

We are feeding mainly hornworms, silks and supers around 4 a day with the occasional butter and wax worm. He has stopes eating crickets 2 months ago so we switched him to the worm diet, with seemingly no problem.

The people at the pet store told us that we should stop feeding him so many horns and silks and try to only feed crickets until he gets so hungry that he wil eat them out of pure starvation. This sounds very harsh to me. This pet store sells horns for 1.50 a piece so it isn't in there interest to tell me to buy crickets instead of pricey hornworms.

What should I do try to starve him out to break his strike on crickets or keep
his all worm diet?

 

[Monzon]

Have you offered flies?

 

[ICu35]

I have not feed any flies, I wouldn't know where to get them and how to release them in his cage

 

[justjumpit621]

Try Dubia roaches, they are easy to care for and have more meat than crickets. They are also really easy to breed. an all worm diet is not healthy, all of the fat can cause serious health issues.

 

[Ryan Jarosek]

Me and my girlfriend just came back from our best regional pet store and they told us an all worm diet is bad for our 9 month old male veiled, they claimed it could cause runny stools and even prolapse.. Is this true?

We are feeding mainly hornworms, silks and supers around 4 a day with the occasional butter and wax worm. He has stopes eating crickets 2 months ago so we switched him to the worm diet, with seemingly no problem.

The people at the pet store told us that we should stop feeding him so many horns and silks and try to only feed crickets until he gets so hungry that he wil eat them out of pure starvation. This sounds very harsh to me. This pet store sells horns for 1.50 a piece so it isn't in there interest to tell me to buy crickets instead of pricey hornworms.

What should I do try to starve him out to break his strike on crickets or keep
his all worm diet?

If you were only feeding "one" of those types of worms I would be concerned with the diet. Since you are using those three types you are providing a pretty good balance in nutrition.

Do you gutload your superworms? Feed them carrots , dark leafy greens and some sort of bran or dry gutload. If not you should. Crickets and Roaches are good because of the ease of gutloading them.

You may see some runny poops from the worms that just because there is lots of liquid in them.

Where you run into trouble with prolapse is if you feed only superworms. They can cause a backup in the system.

Keep feeding the variety of worms and every now and then offer crickets. He is probably just really happy with the worms. He will eat crickets again one day.

 

[Ryan Jarosek]

We are feeding mainly hornworms, silks and supers around 4 a day with the occasional butter and wax worm.

Even better , I missed the butter and wax worms. Wax worms are the only thing to use sparingly. They are very high in fat and chameleons can get addicted to them. They must be delicious.

 

[ICu35]

I gut load the suppers with leafy green carrots sweet potatos and I use enriched baby food bran mixed with normal bran as substrate because it's higher in calcium

 

[sandrachameleon]

A varied diet, with as many options as possible, is preferable to a larva only diet.

Unless you are gutloading the silkworms, butters, horns and supers really well, I would try getting him to eat roaches or crickets again. Roaches and crickets are easier to gutload, and thus provide more nutrients. They also have less fat than most larva.

Chameleons do need some chinton "fibre" in their diet, but so long as you continue to include supers he should be okay on that score.

Have you considered adding terrestrial isopods? Stick insects?

A healthy adult male chameleon can easily go a week without food, so when he is a bit older you could "starve" him to switch him back to accepting crickets as part of his deit. This is not cruel or harsh. They dont "strave" the same way mammals so. Indeed he wouldnt be starving at all, since as soon as he was truly hungry he would accept whatever bug was offered. However most owners over feed and give into the preferences of the chameleon, even if those preferences are not the best choices. Kinda like letting your human child skip eating vegetables.

In the meantime, do gutload the silkworms, supers, butters etc. https://www.chameleonforums.com/blo...just-crickets-roaches-gutload-your-larva.html
Drop the waxworms though - they provide nothing of value with lots of fat.

 

[ICu35]

At the moment I have a few crickets in his cage I'm hopping he will eat them, but it is hard to keep track of if he is actualy eating crickets because they always jump out of his feeding cup. And it's a larger cage with lots of places for crickets to hide or just drop dead after enough time.

 

[Ryan Jarosek]

At the moment I have a few crickets in his cage I'm hopping he will eat them, but it is hard to keep track of if he is actualy eating crickets because they always jump out of his feeding cup. And it's a larger cage with lots of places for crickets to hide or just drop dead after enough time.

He may prefer eating them off of the cage wall. You could give him a few days off of food then try releasing some crickets near the bottom of the cage and let them run up.

There is a good chance he will hunt them down.

 

[ICu35]

Well he's is eyeballing the crickets pretty hard when I put them in his cage more so then his worms. I have not seen it but I think he might of just eaten a cricket. It was on top of the cage 4 inchs away 5 minutes later no where to be found. I just put another in there fingers crossed

 

[Ryan Jarosek]

Well he's is eyeballing the crickets pretty hard when I put them in his cage more so then his worms. I have not seen it but I think he might of just eaten a cricket. It was on top of the cage 4 inchs away 5 minutes later no where to be found. I just put another in there fingers crossed

Sometimes you just don't see it. My fingers are crossed!