Enrichment Mixture for Crickets, Mealworms

and Other Live Feed

An cricket and mealworm enrichment mixture that appears to promote the health, and certainly promotes good coloration in both amphibians and reptiles.

Wild amphibians and reptiles that have an insectivorous diet generally consume a wide variety of prey. The wide variety of diets of these prey insects will provide a corresponding variety of vitamins and minerals and other compounds such as carotenoids.

In captivity the two most convenient insect feeds are crickets and mealworms. In some regions they are the only insects that are legal due to fears of potential pest problems, such as those with browsing insects such as silkworms or grazers such as grasshoppers. If available these browsers and grazers which offer a good potential for improved diet with their stomach filled with vegetable matter.

Insects can be enriched to increase their nutritional value before they are fed to frogs or reptiles. The most common enrichment mixtures are high calcium, moderate protein mixtures, with some vitamins added. The term 'gut loading' is sometimes used in the place of 'enrichment'. However, the term 'enrichment' is used in aquaculture for the enrichment of live feed such as artemia and is the industrial norm. Also industrially, the term feed is used for manufactured processed food, and food for natural food.

I have developed a high quality enrichment mixture for crickets and mealworms that appears to promote the health, and certainly promotes good coloration in both amphibians and reptiles. This mixture provides a wide variety of vitamins and other compounds, and unsaturated fats.

To prepare the enrichment mixture you need a coffee grinder, a mixing dish, some turtle pellets, spirulina powder, and fish oil.

High protein turtle feed designed for a carnivorous diet of crustaceans, snails, and submerged insects is used as the enrichment mixture base. The turtle feed I use is produced by MAZURI www.mazuri.com.

The turtle mixture is ground to a fine powder with a coffee grinder. In the image the ground turtle feed is being poured on some already prepared enrichment mixture.

Spirulina powder is then added to the ground turtle feed at a ratio of one part spirulina powder to 8 parts turtle feed. Spirulina is a blue-green algae and is one of the most primitive organisms. These organisms converted the earths atmosphere to oxygen about 600 million years ago and are considered a source of many vital nutrients. Spirulina is widely used in many human and animal health products. I find an economical source of high grade spirulina www.nowfoods.com.

Because of their low melting point PUFAs and HUFAs (poly-, and highly unsaturated fatty acids) are used by animals in low temperature environments to prevent the solidification and decreased function of cell walls and other fatty organelles. Fats also supplement many biochemical processes such as vitamin absorption.

Good sources of unsaturated fatty acids are fish and squid (cuttlefish) oils, especially those from fish in cold seas. An added bonus with these oils is their high vitamin A and other fat soluble vitamin content.

The type of fish oil I use is in 475ml bottles from Vita Shine from LAER Products Inc., 28 England Drive, Mulgrave, Nova Scotia, Canada, BOE 2GO.

A potential problem with these fish and squid oils is that surplus in the mixture can kill or immobilise the crickets or mealworms. Consequently, add the oil until the mixture just feels moist but is still crumbly and does not clump.

With mealworms which are sensitive to the mixture, the mixture can be mixed as 50% mixture, 25% bran, 25% pollard to prevent the blocking of their stomates and morbidity or death. Or alternatively to prevent problems a high calcium cricket enrichment mixture is good at a mixture of 50:50% of each.

It is good to not feed the crickets or mealworms for some hours before enrichment to clear their alimentary tract.

The last two images show in the top image 1/4" crickets before enrichment and in the lower image the same crickets after consuming the enrichment mixture for half an hour. The crickets show a darkened color and a green stripe down their back from the consumed enrichment mixture.