Butterworms Info......

Does anyone have any practical experience using butterworms?...i've often heard really good things about them but they were never the easiest things to get a hold of here in the U.K.
Nowadays they seem to be getting easier to get so i thought i'd try some but would appreciate any feedback from anybody that uses or has used them before.....
cheers

Butterworms are ok as an occasional treat. Even though they are perfect in regards to calcium (twice the amount of calcium as worms) they are extremely high in fat calories, 87 calories to be exact. That's alot for a newt to work off.

Buy they are a great food for breeding time!

About once a year or so I will order some butterworms. In my experience they are well received overall by most of my herps however there are always some individuals, both salamanders and lizards, that seem to find them distasteful. They are always relished by tarantulas and if you are by chance a fisherman then they make a great live bait, staying on the hook for many casts. One drawback for me is the price, having over a hundred mouths to feed can become very expensive using butterworms.
Chip

Their insane price out wieghs their value with me. I'd rather just gutload my crickets properly or dust my food items with rep cal a few times a month. If I want to add weight to my animals wax worms have always worked very well at a 1/3 the price.

Regarding the calcium content of butterworms, I would say that it is unproven. The figures widely quoted may simply be misinformation. Every website that gives information about the nutrition of butterworms lists the following:

Moisture 58.54%
Ash 1.04%
Protein 16.20%
Fat 5.21%
Calories/Fat 87.73
Calcium (ml/100 grs) 42.90

At first glance, this looks like an official nutritional analysis, but a lot of this is just rubbish! Here is why it is rubbish, in my opinion:

(1) There is no such thing as "calories/fat". If we assume that they mean "Kcal/g fat", then this calculates out to about 11 Kcal/g of dry weight, which is completely out of line with other insects. So either the units are wrong or the value is wrong.

(2) The unit for the calcium (ml/100g) is also total boloney. This isn't a valid unit for measuring ANYTHING. It's possible that the correct units might be g/100g, making the calcium 42.9%. This just cannot be right.

(3) There is no information about phosphorus content. Without knowing the Ca ratio, there is no way to say if butterworms are a high-calcium feeder or not.

(4) Regarding fat, if the butterworm is 5.2% fat by total weight, and moisture is 58.5%, then the fat by dry weight would be about 12.5%. This is much lower than waxworms (46.4%) and a bit lower than crickets (13.8%). Frankly, it is so low that I question whether the analysis is really correct. The purpose of a grub is to store energy in preparation for metamorphosis; this energy is normally stored as fat. Can we really believe that the butterworm has a lower % fat than a cricket?

For additional comparisons of fat and calcium values, see:
Caudata Culture Articles - Nutritional Values
I didn't include butterworms in the nutritional analysis on that page because I couldn't find any analysis for them, other than the oft-quoted one, which I think is highly suspect.

One of the charts I found was here. This looks somewhat different to me but I'm not sure. I just know my stuff gets insanely obese if fed these too often.

wow, thanks for all the feedback guys...really appreciated.
They are expensive here too but i have a few breeding projects in the pipe line so that was my main reason for perhaps trying these out. Anyone know why they're so expensive in the first place?....surely they're not that hard to culture

This is what I have been able to find on Butterworms. They are a Moth larvae collected from Chile. They are irradiated before they are shipped. Two things happen when they do this. It kills bacteria and fungus on the butterworm. It also stunts their growth so they cannot transform into adults. Stopping all cultureing attempts. And protecting the trade from us do it your selfers and any other wholesalers moving in on the buisness. They can be kept on bran flakes with sliced carrots and sweet potatoes for moisture. They must be kept as dry as posssible or they will die. You can also just store them in your fridge. The best price for them was 9.99 for a 100 count from Beaver bait co. I don't know the shipping however. You can get 250 wax worms for 6.99 + shipping from them. Here is the nutritional info that I could find. Except for the calcium they are very close to wax worms. I also have never done buisness with Beaver bait and have no idea if they are any good just seemed to the best price I found.

Moisture 58.54
Ash 1.04
Protein 16.20
Fat 5.21
Calories/fat 87.73
Calcium ml/100grs 42.90

After reading a few more sites on butter worms I think the carrot should be left out of the bran flakes while storing them. The other sites I have read say nothing about doing this and keep warning about moisture and mold killing them. Butterworms should hibernate in your fridge for a few months. Maybe they will eat carrots while not hibernating. Someone will have to try and get back to us. Another reason why they dose these guys with radiation is that they are an extreme pest in Chile and they don't want them takeing hold somewhere else. Although this would seem hard cause they claim them to only eat Tebo tree leaves. Found in South America. I guess better safe than sorry though. I mean gypsy moths almost killed off most eastern forrests in the 80's. They sprayed the **** out the mountain I hike on.

Hahaha, the same sounds yummy at least =]

mmm...that sounds like a bit of a worry to me....treating them with radiation!....still i guess everyone uses them with no problems. Thanks for all the info guys