Gutloading Live Food

In order to offer your pet a nutritional meal, it is important to remember that what goes into your live food goes into your pet.

While all our livefood is fed on a carefully developed diet, the nutritional value of feeder insects begins to diminish from the moment they stop eating, and it is therefore advisable to continue to feed livefood throughout to maintain the highest possible nutritional content, and ensure the maximum benefit for your pet.

Gutloading Crickets

Crickets will eat a wide range of vegetables, the more variety you can offer, the better.

It is usually adequate to offer crickets selected scraps from your own human diet, such as potato or carrot peelings, apple cores, salad, etc.

Rinse everything thoroughly to remove any trace chemicals / pesticides, and never feed insects to your pet if they are behaving strangely or there have been a large number of deaths.

If you are unsure about pesticides, buying organic guarantees they are free from chemicals.

As well as fresh fruit / vegetables, crickets will also eat bran (this is included in the livefood tubs, but may need topping up depending on how long you keep the crickets) and dry dog food.

Some gutloading formulae have been formulated to provide a complete diet to crickets in captivity, however this can prove expensive and are rarely as popular as that outlined above.

Gutloading Mealworms and Morio Worms

Mealworms, unlike crickets, prefer a mostly dry diet, and will happily live and breed in bran alone, requiring very little moisture.

To enhance the nutritional value of your mealworms, you may offer a small amount of fresh fruit / veg (a cubic centimeter will more than suffice for a typical tub of mealworms or morios) every week or so, however using more than this will result in excess moisture and mould. Ensure adequate ventilation when feeding fresh foods to prevent a build up of moisture.

As well as bran, mealworms may also be fed oats or chicken meal (dry), or a combination. Some add fish flakes or food supplements such as neutrobal to the bran mix, however the effectiveness of this in increasing the nutritional value of the mealworms is not known.

Gutloading Locusts

Locusts can be sustained on a diet of grass and dandelion leaves (remember to collect these from an are where pesticides are not in use).

Locusts, like crickets, will eat dry food (such as bran) as well, but require some fresh leaves for moisture.

Salad leaves and cucumber are also eaten in small amounts, most green vegetables are worth trying.