New paper about nutritional value of alternative feeder insects

froggy · Jun 30, 2011

Attached is a new paper about the nutritional values of 'alternative' feeder insects, including "rusty red cockroaches (Blatta lateralis), six-spotted cockroaches (Eublaberus distanti), Madagascar hissing cockroaches (Gromphadorhina portentosa), fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster), false katydids (Microcentrum rhombifolium), beetles of the mealworm (Tenebrio molitor), and superworm beetles (Zophobas morio), as well as woodlice (Porcellio scaber)."

Quite interesting, and shows that none of these feeders are complete nutritionally. The woodlice have very good calcium

hosphorus ratios (12:1), though.

Hope its useful - might be worth adding the data to the article on CC.

Chris

Mark · Jul 1, 2011

Thanks for posting this Chris. I'm sure we'll get round to updating the nutritional values articles with the feeders studied in this paper. I'll stick it on my "to do" list.

I use garden collected woodlice in all my terrestrial enclosures and the great news is that caudates readily accept them. I've tried raising some newts recently using woodlice as the main food source and they appear to do very well. They produced very large grey stools, presumably due to the grey colour of the woodlouse exoskeleton.

grius · Jul 1, 2011

I feed Porcellio scaber regulary to my animals, yesterdays feeding was actually lots of woodlice

And if gutload with good food, dosent that make them okey in nutrition?

Jackulwulf · Jul 1, 2011

I didn't really understand a lot of the numbers and such from the article. I want to get a hold of and try out some Porcellio Scaber for my tiger since he's not really an earthworm eater and was hoping that they would be more nutritious for him. So if they aren't complete nutritiously then according to the article, what exactly are they lacking so I can try to supplement it?

froggy · Jul 4, 2011

You can feed them a variety of food to enhance nutritional value, although I'm not sure how well woodlice gutload. You can also dust them with nutritional supplement powders sold for use in amphibians (Nutrobal etc).
The best thing to do, though, is to give animals a varied diet, as what some species of live food lack, others will have more of.

C

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New paper about nutritional value of alternative feeder insects

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