My cham is addicted to superworms

[slowfoot]

Anthropomorphic thread title aside...

I have an adult male panther who lives either outside or inside when it's too cold. He's been active and acting normal: drinking well, basking, looking well filled-out, being a brat.

For the last week or so, he's refused to eat anything but superworms (I gave him a superworm for the first time about two weeks ago). At first I thought there might be a health issue as he refused all crickets and roaches (and I was out of superworms). But when offered superworms, he goes nuts. I've tested this a few times and it's definitely a superworm preference - he will gorge on them if I let him and will eat them anytime they are offered. He also likes other 'worm like' things: I offered mealworms a couple of times and he ate those quickly.

So my question is: Do I just refuse to feed supers anymore? How long should I let his hunger strike go on? I know these are not a good staple, although I've been gut-loading the supers with collards, orange slices, and sweet potato.

 

[Ryan Jarosek]

Anthropomorphic thread title aside...

I have an adult male panther who lives either outside or inside when it's too cold. He's been active and acting normal: drinking well, basking, looking well filled-out, being a brat.

For the last week or so, he's refused to eat anything but superworms (I gave him a superworm for the first time about two weeks ago). At first I thought there might be a health issue as he refused all crickets and roaches (and I was out of superworms). But when offered superworms, he goes nuts. I've tested this a few times and it's definitely a superworm preference - he will gorge on them if I let him and will eat them anytime they are offered. He also likes other 'worm like' things: I offered mealworms a couple of times and he ate those quickly.

So my question is: Do I just refuse to feed supers anymore? How long should I let his hunger strike go on? I know these are not a good staple, although I've been gut-loading the supers with collards, orange slices, and sweet potato.

I have a panther that for about 2 months only ate Supers. They are high in fat but you are gutloading them well. I say offer him a couple supers every other day and throw some crickets in.

In my experiance they will get tired of the supers too.

Your best bet would be to get your hands on some Silk worms and get him hooked on those.

 

[sandrachameleon]

If he continues to only want supers, I would stop offering them. Offer crickets and other feeders only for a couple weeks. He'll get hungry enough to eat what's given to him. If it were me, I wouldnt want him controlling what I offer him to be only supers, as that's like giving control to a 2 year old that only wants mcDonalds crap food. Yeah, there's some lettuce or a pickle on there, but its still quite a lot of fat!
Once you break the superworm habit, you can start to offer them again in restricted quantity.

You may find this thread of interest: https://www.chameleonforums.com/what-causes-picky-eaters-27577/

 

[slowfoot]

Update: The brat finally caved and ate his crickets. Yes, it took this long.

It was mostly my fault: I'd be strict and not offer supers for about a day or two, but then I'd cave and let him have them. There's always that little thought in the back of your head that maybe there's something wrong and he's gone off his food, so I'd have to just check... No - he was always perfectly happy to eat supers.

I finally had to just wait through five days of Grumpy refusing everything, and it was hard. Yesterday, however, I offered a cricket and he snapped it up, then ate 5 more.

 

[eisentrauti]

Give him one or two weeks nothing to eat and I bet that he will eat everything

 

[sandrachameleon]

5 days - not too bad really. I totally know what you mean about caving in and giving him a super just to make sure he's okay. Glad you got his diet back on track