how do you make your roach food?

[Animalia]

I had gnat problems once with a tank that got out of hand.... I just got a mantid case... 50 little pray mantis... versus thousands of gnats..
Mantis where fat and full and i had no more crap flying around lol.

Then had alot of mantis =D

Win, Win.

And i think zeus from the none kill rescue has some cases right now.

 

[J Morningstar]

I use a ground organic seafood cat food blend(for this I use my hand blender and it does work great) mixed with finely chopped ends and left over veggies which are mostly spinach, romaine, peppers(yellow green or red) squash of any type, orange and assorted other vegatables..beets were an unexpected fave, and it seems hissers do not like muchrooms.. I make these into meatball sized balls, label the ingredients on the bags so I know what doesn't work, and freeze them in bags till ready to use, then 25 seconds in the microwave before feeding, ta da! Two balls a week and they last months! The onlything paid for is the catfood.
I was thinking of adding alge flakes or disks sometime to try it.

 

[MauricesExoticP]

I have a mill grind the majority of my roach diet for me, ground to a flour like consistency for a couple of reasons, first is smaller food particle size affords a better blend of ingredients and insures every roach is getting every ingredient in the diet, second is that small particle size takes less energy to consume leaving more energy for other tasks like growing and breeding, and lastly because I have way to many roaches to be grinding up ingredients on a daily basis.

On a side note, I don't use dog or cat food at all, the high fat content is in my opinion empty calories and does little by way of improving feeder quality.

I believe most use the cat and dog food for cost effectiveness, please correct me if I'm erring in this assumption.

That leads me to question how much do you feed any particular number of roaches. I would think volume of food consumed is not exactly a determining factor in its quality (several posts mention how much their roaches like a particular concoction of ingredients or commercial roach diet), but rather the result of breeding numbers or growth rate increase vs a particular quantity of food.

Of course cost and end nutritional value of the insects being fed also play into the equation of roach diet value.

For example: fruits and vegetables range from 80 to 90% water and are fairly expensive as compared to your average bag of ol'roy dog food at Wall*Mart, but those fruits are also pretty low on the nutritional scale unless you are very adept at combining just the right quantities of fruits, greens, legumes, and root type vegetables, and supplement with a few B vitamins. The cost would be out of this world, and your production per dollar would be pretty low.

Dog food provides all the required nutrients and a boat load of fat, and some stuff I'm not at all interested in making its way into my pets even in the smallest portions.

In the end, for me at least its a matter of nutritional value first, the food conversion rate being second on my list of priorities, followed by the overall cost effectiveness of a particular diet.

Maurice Pudlo

 

[codykrr]

Maurice.

Yeah, I pretty much feed dog food, because they eat it, its cheap(for the masses of roaches I have) and seems to do the job well.

If I were feeding reptiles I would for sure change the diet to incorporate more nutrition. but for my collection of spiders and such it works great.

I have heard numerous variations of "roach foods" and to be honest they all have there benefits and down sides.

I really believe you should feed your feeders according to what will be eating them.

For bearded dragons, chameleons, anoles and various other reptiles I would defiantly feed them a higher fruit and green ratio over just dry food.

I am curious as to what you feed yours now though. maybe send me a pm if you dont want to post your recipe.

 

[dtknow]

Probably the most cost effective way of getting nutritious roaches would be to feed your main colony on dog food etc. and then have a seperate container you feed out of stocked up with good stuff(fruits, veggies, leaves(blackberry/mulberry etc.) high quality dogfood or fishfood...I find dubia absolutely crave old Crested gecko Diet). The roaches will only eat so much fruits and veggies so it is best to still provide protein for the ones that are no longer thirsty but still a bit hungry. Of course periodically when numbers run low simply throw in some from your main colony.

On grinding up food-I would agree with the majority that grinding it up does make a difference in that less energy is used eating it which makes more energy for other things. Also-nymphs can feed easier. No need to grind down everything though. Someone on here noted that whole kibbles dissapear quicker this is due to them grabbing them and running away with them and feeding in their shelters.

 

[Israel2004]

Someone on here noted that whole kibbles dissapear quicker this is due to them grabbing them and running away with them and feeding in their shelters.

That would be me. My colony is so small that I'm sure that it's not them pulling the kibble into the egg crates. I have one flat in there that I just pick up when I check on them. Whole kibble gets ate faster.

 

[AudreyElizabeth]

Probably the most cost effective way of getting nutritious roaches would be to feed your main colony on dog food etc. and then have a seperate container you feed out of stocked up with good stuff(fruits, veggies, leaves(blackberry/mulberry etc.) high quality dogfood or fishfood...I find dubia absolutely crave old Crested gecko Diet).

Hey this is not a bad idea. After all, you gut load feeders from the pet store.
I have fed Crested Gecko Diet to my dubia colony in the past. They do love it, but the cost would be prohibitive to feed as part of a staple.

 

[catfishrod69]

well if your wanting to do it easy, then dont grind it at all....dont see the point....my dubia have deep oatmeal bedding, i give them a few pieces of dog food, and every once in a while a few sliced carrots or potato, and some water gel....same for my lats and lobsters, only bedding isnt deep at all, just thin layer....i just dont wanna put too much work into feeding my feeders.....i already got alot of things to feed...

 

[J Morningstar]

Mine are both feeders and pets, I use the ocean blend organic cat food(one bag bought every 2-3 months), but also since my wife and I eat a lot of vegetables there are a ton of trimmings that are not eaten, they get root vegetables like beets and yams, they get all sorts of dark greens like spinach,chard, and romaine, I also throw in an orange wedge into every batch of food, I believe I have a very well balanced staple diet for them as it varies with what I eat. So they get variety as well. But none of their "expensive" produce is bought for them except the orange about once every month and a half.

 

[AaronP]

Feeding Roaches

I grind my food... why? After raising roaches on a pretty large scale for over 3 years, I find that roaches eat the ground stuff faster.

They are decomposers, but in the wild, bacteria,enviroment,sunlight, ect, start the decomposing process. In captivity, all we are doing by grinding is mechanically decomposing instead of environmentally decomposing( allowing the critters bacteria ect in the environment to do it. )

I find mine go through almost 2x the feed in the same amount of time, if it is ground up. Whats that mean? they are spending more time eating and swallowing food instead of chewing(breaking) it up. When you have 70K lobsters in a bin, you notice how quickly the food disappears

Food: Variety is the Spice of Life. We have all heard that saying before, unless we live next our T's, i.e. under a rock. But it is really true. The more good quality ingredients, variety the better. Can you raise roaches on nothing but cheap crappy dog food? yes... but do you want to feed cheap crappy dog food to your tarantula are bearded dragon? or your dog for that matter? Probably not once you know what is in it.. As far as fresh fruits and vegis, i try to give all that I can as well. it dose lower the maintenance on the water dish, and I am sure that there are nutrients,enzymes,ect that are only found in fresh foods..lots of things break down when the food is heated and dehydrated ect.

Gut loading: I believe that some gut loading can be good...but dosen't it make more sense to grow the roach with quality ingredients as opposed to just sprinkling some on top( or stuffing some inside as it were) when you are done?

 

[VickyChaiTea]

Question would raw or cooked meats be a good source of protien? Why or why not? What about moist cat/dog food as opposed to dry? Are grain free cat/dogs food preferable to ones that are made out of almost nothing but corn (science diet, ol roy, friskies, ets.)

 

[codykrr]

Question would raw or cooked meats be a good source of protien? Why or why not? What about moist cat/dog food as opposed to dry? Are grain free cat/dogs food preferable to ones that are made out of almost nothing but corn (science diet, ol roy, friskies, ets.)

Meat would be bad mainly because..

A. it rots

B. it would cause an outbreak of maggots/flies.

C. it stink!:barf:

moist cat and dog food will have the same problems as above.

You could use grain free dog/cat food. but why? I feed cheap ole' roy and my colony thrives!

 

[VickyChaiTea]

Well if you're using it for animal protien I'm afraid you won't find much if any. All the protien in low quality dog food comes from corn. So maybe roaches don't really need that much animal protien?

 

[eeyoremd]

I feed all my roaches flake fish food and sliced cucumbers... They're not only thriving, but breeding a bit more than I'd like.

 

[baconmushroom]

fruits really do well in my opinion, oranges and bananas to be exact..and you dont need water crystals since they get all the liquid in the fruits..but thats just me..so far so good with the roach colony.

 

[dtknow]

Gut loading: I believe that some gut loading can be good...but dosen't it make more sense to grow the roach with quality ingredients as opposed to just sprinkling some on top( or stuffing some inside as it were) when you are done?

Not necessarily. While its true roaches are uptaking the nutrition from their food-you can only change the roaches chemistry to a certain point with their diet-excess will simply be excreted. I have no evidence to support my belief but I think that feeding some roaches on a high quality diet for several weeks prior to feeding them off would result in equivalent nutritional value compared to roaches fed this same diet all their lives. Keep in mind a large part of what your animal is eating is the gut contents of their prey. Gross as it is-the smell of the gut contents changes depending on what the roaches are eating(I know this because sometimes I chop them or they get ripped in half by my bluetongue skink...if they've been fed a lot of fruit they have a distinctly sweet, yeasty odor).

 

[hassman789]

I am thinking about getting a roach colony (can't deal with crickets) and I have dogs so I can just give them dog food as a staple. But I also have these dry box turtle food pellets. I really want to get rid of them. Do you think roaches would do good on that for a little while?

 

[ZephAmp]

I am thinking about getting a roach colony (can't deal with crickets) and I have dogs so I can just give them dog food as a staple. But I also have these dry box turtle food pellets. I really want to get rid of them. Do you think roaches would do good on that for a little while?

That will be just fine for them. Probably better than the dog food.

 

[hassman789]

That will be just fine for them. Probably better than the dog food.

Cool thanks!