Dubia Roaches, calcium powder, and chow.

[dhall79]

If I gut load my roaches with high calcium roach chow, do I still have to powder them before feeding off to my beardie?

What are the best recipes for roach chow?

 

[diegothediggy]

Yeh id still powder not 100% tho

 

[Josh]

I'd still powder them though I suppose you shouldn't need to necessarily.
What are you currently feeding your roaches? There are commercial gut loaders that you can buy. Otherwise most people just feed veggie and fruit leftovers and such.

 

[dhall79]

Feeding fresh fruit and veggies once or twice a week, and roach chow that was purchased on eBay. Wanting to start making my own roach chow for cost and quality control. You never know what is in the purchased stuff.

 

[Josh]

Well, some of the gut loaders I've used by companies like Mazuri publish what they put in the food. I don't know any recipes off hand that would gut load from stuff you could make at home. I would try fruits and veggies that are naturally high in Ca. That'd be a good start at least.

 

[dhall79]

From what I've read, cat food, fish food, and calcium powder crushed and mixed together for the daily staple or chow.

 

[PatsyB]

I read conflicting info on the cat food. Some sites say that it has too much protein in it and it's not good to feed your feeders.

 

[Canicke]

There are lots of recipes online. My last batch was a combination of generic Cheerios oatmeal and dry dog food. I've also read that you can use fish flakes but that seems kind of expensive to me. And – I've read that cat food is very high in vitamin A so you want to avoid that. Throw it all in a blender mix it up and you're good to go.

 

[dhall79]

Good to know. This is why I poll the audience first.

 

[Defianceofexistence]

I make my own feeder food/gut load. I take different fruits and veggies and put them through my little chopper. Then mix it all together and freeze it in ice cube trays. Then I store them in ziplock bags and toss a few in every few days. Let me tell you, my roaches eat every single smidge of it. And it covers food and water for them since they are frozen. The last batch I made had:

carrot
mango
apple
orange
pear
yellow pepper
collard greens
dandelion greens
bee pollen

I also make a dry gutload that has a bunch of stuff in it and so they get that and the cubes. Everyone is happy and then I know that Bowser and my chameleon are getting a lot of good stuff while eating them ;-)

 

[Defianceofexistence]

Id watch how much dog/cat food you are feeding. If its just your breeders you give it to then its fine but if your using it for gut loading I would cut back.

 

[jarich]

Indeed both cat and dog food does have too much protein in it, and like fish food, there is usually too much phosphorous to make it a good gut load for reptile feeders. If you are looking for a cheaper alternative you can use chicken layer feed. It has a good calcium content/ratio as well as high vitamin and mineral content in general.