Feeding Madagascar Hissing Roaches.
By: Devin Price
There are many opinions out there on what to feed madagascar hissing roaches. I have kept and breed these fascinating creatures for years. I have to admit that my methods of caring for my roaches have changed many times. Well I guess that's only natural. Evolving methods make for better science.
When I first started keeping crickets I fed them a simple diet of bran and some vegetable scraps every once and a while. They lived, but they bred slowly and never really grew very large. I only realized this after changing their diet. The next diet consisted of dried cat food. They grew much larger and produced many more offspring. The only drawback was the smell. it was horrible. I attribute this to the high protein content. That really wasn't a problem though.
Since I was breeding the hissing roaches to feed my collection of bearded dragons I wanted to make sure I was feeding them a vitamin rich diet as well. We all know that our reptiles are what we feed our feeder insects. So I needed to find a diet that would cause the roaches to grow large and produce lots of baby roaches, but still provide good nutrition to my reptile collection.
I started my research by researching what my bearded dragons needed. There are many online resources that you can utilize to find great advice on bearded dragon diets. I found that they needed vitamins A,C,B, and calcium, especially my egg laying females. The catch was many of the vegetables that are high in calcium are high in phosphorus which block the conversion of calcium. A true catch 22. I found the solution right in my back yard. A common weed that I was always trying to get rid of. Dandelion. Here are a few figures that will put the phosphorus factor into perspective. Romaine lettuce's ratio of calcium to phosphorus is 1:1.3, so the phosphorus cancels out the calcium. Now dandelion's ratio is 2.8:1. So you can see the benefit of feeding certain green vegetables.
I have now switched to a diet of %50 dried cat food to %50 dandelion greens. I have found that the roaches are still growing fast and big and still produce high numbers of young. I have found that the smell is not as bad as well.
I hope this article helps you with your roach breeding ventures. With a little patience and a lot of research I'm sure you will have as much fun and success raising madagascar hissing roaches as I have.
For more information on raising madagascar hissing roaches check out my insect site.
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