Female veiled NAILS hummingbird moth in slow-mo

CamrynTheCham22 said:
When I take my cham outside, could she eat those little blue ones that fly around all the time?
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She could, but why chance it? In this day and age keep your girl safe and feed her responsibly. Gutload your choice of available feeder accordingly and go from there. There's no need to take risks with unknown variables.
 
CamrynTheCham22 said:
When I take my cham outside, could she eat those little blue ones that fly around all the time?
Click to expand...
Yes, she can eat any type of dragon fly she can get her toung on. But I will say that my approach probably isn’t right for most people. This is because most people do not have the kind of access to wild, clean sources of bugs as I do. Giving your Cham wild insects comes with a very small risk of transferring parasites to your Cham, as @MSMorgan was hinting at. If you do allow your chams to east wild insects you must also have them tested for parasites regularly and be willing to pay for medical treatment if parasites are contracted. All the money I would have spent on feeders is redirected to their medical care, but up until this point I’ve never had to get them treated.

All of my reptiles are fed almost exclusively wild caught insects from about April to November each year. I’ve been doing this for about 5yrs now and have never had an issue. Since I feed my chams such a wide variety of bugs I rarely gutload them. There is no need since they get such a wide array of nutrients from their varied wild diet, this is something gut loaded captive bred feeders seek to imitate but can never offer.

Something else to keep in mind is that nature has engineered chams to eat wild bugs, and their parasites, for who knows how many millions of years. There is nothing more natural than a Cham eating wild insects.
 
Brodybreaux25 said:
All of my reptiles are fed almost exclusively wild caught insects from about April to November each year. I’ve been doing this for about 5yrs now and have never had an issue. Since I feed my chams such a wide variety of bugs I rarely gutload them. There is no need since they get such a wide array of nutrients from their varied wild diet, this is something gut loaded captive bred feeders seek to imitate but can never offer.
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I agree with everything you posted other than this. It's a common myth tossed around this forum. The feeders we offer get a better variety of gutload by a longshot. Insects in the wild really aren't eating anything all that special. Our gutload is/should be a mix of foods that are from all over the world loaded with micro/macro nutrients that one local spot anywhere can't match. Now does this even matter? Do chameleons need or are they able to use most of these nutrients? Could it hurt them? We will probably not have accurate answers for any of that anytime soon. What you are doing is offering variety which is arguably more important than gutloading... just like eating a cow would offer something different than eating a chicken, or spinach vs kale. Eating different insects will offer different nutrients.

Not criticizing anything you're doing though, I think it's great. Just disagreed on that little part and wanted to throw that out there.
 
I agree entirely. I was just thinking that when she is outside, it is hard to keep her from eating things that fly and land around her. I mean, I don't encourage it on a daily basis or anything, I was just seeing if she would be okay if she did happen to eat one or two.
 
jamest0o0 said:
I agree with everything you posted other than this. It's a common myth tossed around this forum. The feeders we offer get a better variety of gutload by a longshot. Insects in the wild really aren't eating anything all that special. Our gutload is/should be a mix of foods that are from all over the world loaded with micro/macro nutrients that one local spot anywhere can't match. Now does this even matter? Do chameleons need or are they able to use most of these nutrients? Could it hurt them? We will probably not have accurate answers for any of that anytime soon. What you are doing is offering variety which is arguably more important than gutloading... just like eating a cow would offer something different than eating a chicken, or spinach vs kale. Eating different insects will offer different nutrients.

Not criticizing anything you're doing though, I think it's great. Just disagreed on that little part and wanted to throw that out there.
Click to expand...

I totally understand, respect, and accept your argument. The gut content of gutloaded feeder insects would almost certainly be superior to the gut contents of a wild feeder. But you said it yourself, to date we really don’t know how much of that gutload actually transfers to to the Cham.

Chams being fed gutloaded bugs are getting a lot of their nutrition from the gut content of that bug while my approach relies on the entire body of the feeder to provide sustenance.

By me feeding such a wide variety of wild bugs I think there is little question that it’s all getting absorbed by the Cham, that is how nature intended it to work. Proper husbandry is all about trying to recreate a lifestyle identical to what is found in the wild, that is one of the bigger reasons I have chosen to manage my chams this way. It’s defanitly not for everyone, I do feel that I am a unique situation when it comes to the variety of clean bugs I have at my disposal.
 
CamrynTheCham22 said:
I agree entirely. I was just thinking that when she is outside, it is hard to keep her from eating things that fly and land around her. I mean, I don't encourage it on a daily basis or anything, I was just seeing if she would be okay if she did happen to eat one or two.
Click to expand...
She will be fine! It’s just like when your kid swallows a mouth full of dirt when your back is turned! 95% chance It’s not going to hurt them, he’ll they will probably be stronger for it! Builds up those immunities!
 
Brodybreaux25 said:
I totally understand, respect, and accept your argument. The gut content of gutloaded feeder insects would almost certainly be superior to the gut contents of a wild feeder. But you said it yourself, to date we really don’t know how much of that gutload actually transfers to to the Cham.

Chams being fed gutloaded bugs are getting a lot of their nutrition from the gut content of that bug while my approach relies on the entire body of the feeder to provide sustenance.

By me feeding such a wide variety of wild bugs I think there is little question that it’s all getting absorbed by the Cham, that is how nature intended it to work. Proper husbandry is all about trying to recreate a lifestyle identical to what is found in the wild, that is one of the bigger reasons I have chosen to manage my chams this way. It’s defanitly not for everyone, I do feel that I am a unique situation when it comes to the variety of clean bugs I have at my disposal.
Click to expand...

Yup I totally agree with this. That's why I threw in the part about what's really important is variety and the make up of the insect itself. I was just nitpicking your wording. When it comes down to just gut content, what we provide is far superior, however we don't know if all that is even necessary. I think a variety of insects is far superior than having 1-2 insects with a thousand gutload ingredients.
 
But besides where I live it’s how I catch them. Well actually, they catch themselves.

I run two light traps every night. To explain it as simply as I can a light trap uses a bugs natural instinct to fly towards bright lights at night against them. Find yourself a overgrown field, or swamp in my case, and mount a high pressure sodium(incandescent house bulbs work but not nearly as well as HPS) light bulb on the top of a pole. All the bugs fly to the light and get temporarily blinded as they get close. They then slam into the backboard mounted behind the light and fall down into an oversized funnel, then into a bucket where they are trapped! It’s not uncommon to fill if 1/4 to 1/2 a five gallon bucket in a few hours. And your going to get a huge variety of bugs too not just a couple different species. This is how I’m able to feed my chams a wide variety of free wild bugs!
 
Looks something like this
upload_2018-7-16_18-33-33.png
 
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