Leopard geckos are insectivores and depend upon feeder insects such as crickets, dubia roaches and mealworms for essential micro-nutrients. Before being fed to your leo, these feeder insects must first be loaded up with nutrition-rich foods to provide him with optimal nourishment.
Food should always come first when feeding mealworms to pets, and gut loading mealworms is no different. But which foods should you use as part of this important step for their wellbeing?
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Gut Loading Insects
Pet stores or breeders often sell feeder insects deficient in essential nutrients like calcium, thiamin (vitamin B1) and vitamin A; deficiencies that could potentially lead to metabolic bone disease in leopard geckos or reptiles. To combat these health issues and ensure maximum nutritional intake for your feeder insects, gut loading them may help improve their nutritional profile and thus avoid metabolic bone diseases altogether. To do this effectively and ensure healthy reptiles.
Gut loading insects involves providing them with foods rich in the necessary vitamins and nutrients – such as berries, fruits, leafy greens and vegetables – at least 24 hours prior to feeding time.
Feeder insects need time to digest and absorb their food before feeding it to their gecko. Oats is an ideal starting point, while you can add other nutritious items such as berries, vegetables, or leafy greens with lots of vitamins and minerals such as broccoli, cauliflower, kale, bell peppers or even prickly pear leaves as additional gut loading foods.
Gut Loading Vegetables
Step one in gut loading mealworms involves providing them with permanent housing such as a plastic tub, critter keeper or similar. Next step should be adding foods rich in vitamins and minerals such as muesli, milk or vegetables like carrots, turnip greens or apples for their mealworms to enjoy.
Make sure that the food doesn’t contain any pesticides! Mealworms provide the bulk of their diet.
Gut loading feeder insects 24 hours before feeding time will ensure they contain all of the essential nutrients for your leopard gecko, especially omnivorous ones which won’t get all of their dietary requirements from fruits and vegetables alone. It also reduces MBD risks while keeping them healthier for longer!
Gut Loading Fruits
Leopard geckos do not consume vegetables or fruit, so their micro-nutritional needs must come from feeder insects fed to them. In order for this process to work effectively, feeder insects need to be fed base foods like raw squash or pumpkin puree, apple puree, potatoes/sweet potatoes/leafy greens/oats that contain healthy nutrients for gut loading purposes – these worms will then digest this food and pass on these vital vitamins during feeding time!
Without proper nutrition, leopard geckos may suffer from Metabolic Bone Disease which weakens their bones. To combat this issue, a gut load meal plan should be used.
Geckos require several different kinds of feeder insects for proper health; popular choices are crickets (the most widely-fed species), dubia roaches, mealworms, morio worms, wax worms and superworms. It is important to provide them with a variety of gut-loaded insects so as to provide all their needed vitamins.
Gut Loading Superworms
Before offering feeder insects to your Leopard Geckos, it’s essential that they be gut loaded with nutritious foods. This will ensure they contain essential vitamins and minerals your Leopard Geckos requires to thrive. Common insects to gut load include field crickets, mealworms, dubia roaches and locusts; purchasing commercial gut load food makes this task simpler.
If you prefer homemade food for your Leopard Geckos, simply puree up some fruits or vegetables that they enjoy (so long as they have not been exposed to pesticides) and feed it to mealworms. Doing this a few hours ahead gives the gecko time to absorb their nutrition; vitamin dusting may also help ensure they reap as much from each bite – helping prevent obesity issues in Leopard Geckos!