Well you can read about it next month in Reptiles Magazine...(although the editing changed what I wrote somewhat)..
In short there are two forms of gut loading that are mutually exclusive. In the first one, you are correcting the loss of protiens, fat and trace nutrients lost in shipping or by being held at the pet store. To accomplish this, you feed a diet similar to what Morg does for a minimum of 72 hours. (I use crushed dried dog food, fish flakes, Repta-min (or Reptile-ten and oranges for the most part). You should avoid items like spinach or other oxalic acid containing vegetables as the oxalic acid binds the calcium and prevents its use by the animal (note veggies high in calcium are often high in oxalic acid). You should also limit items in the Brassica family (such as kale, broccoli, ect) as these are potentially goitrogenic.
The second one in attempting to use a high calcium cricket diet to provide calcium to the consuming animals. If this is your goal then you should swith to this diet after 24 hours on a regular diet and offer only this diet and water for the next 48 hours. If you give then any other options the crickets will avoid the high calcium diet and consume the other items. After 48 hours the crickets begin to die from the high calcium diets and need to be fed out to the various aniamls. If you forget to give them water on a high calcium diet the crickets will die in a matter of hours.
Also offering calcium in this manner has been shown to raise the serum calcium in some but not all animals fed the crickets.
Ed
