Hornworm eggs

[javsto]

Yesterday I purchased one small (1 inch) hornworm for my cham, to try and see if he would eat it and he went right for it out of the dozens of 1/4 inch crix i put in his feeder cup. He swallowed it right down and took a few of the crix as well but i swear that he went looking for more of the worms becuase he totally ignored the crix after trying the worm. So I was wondering how easy or difficult it is to "grow" my own little feeder colony of hornworms. Are they availabe year round once i go through my initial 50 or so that im buying from greatlakeshornworms.com or mulberryfarms.com and are they the same as tomatoe worms or tobacco worms
or something called "millers" that a friend of mine has in north carolina.

 

[ICu35]

Hornworms raised on tomatoes and tobacco are poisonous to chams but yes they are the same type of worm

 

[ICu35]

They are available all year long for purchase, from what I've heard they pretty hard to start your own breeding colony with.

 

[javsto]

thank you for your response

 

[paigesc]

does anyone know if you can find them locally (such as petsmart?) Our cham is getting tired of crickets and we'd like to start offering him a variety but are clueless about hornworms.. we are currently gutloading our crickets but we're ready to branch out a bit.

if you order them online, how long can you keep them alive and what's the approprite intake for a 6 mo. old cham? He's currently eating 4-6 crickets a day. we tried to offer straight up fruit to him but he's not interested. we didn't think he would be. any helpful tips would be appreciated.