Is it possible to overfeed?

[Izzy's Mom]

Hi there... I have 2 cresties, one adult female and one baby/juvenile unsexed (almost 6 months old). The adult crestie has never shown much interest in crickets. She'll eat one or two if they hang around right in front of her and practically 'dance', but she seems to prefer the CGD mixed with baby food. On the other hand, my juvenile will lunge at anything that moves, including canned, dead crickets if I wiggle them around in front of him. He will eat CGD mixed with baby food, but only if I hand feed him (basically force him to lick it off my finger). My latest trick is to dunk the dead crickets in the CGD first, then he gets a bunch with each cricket.

My question is about the juvenile... is it possible to overfeed him? It seems like if I kept offering cricket after cricket, he would keep on eating them. Right now, I've been stopping after about three 1/2 inch long crickets dunked in CGD each night... I don't know if this is normal, too much or not enough. He doesn't look big enough to fit all those crickets in his stomach! He currently weighs about 8.5 g and has been gaining weight much more quickly since I started adding the canned crickets to his diet.

 

[strakey]

Feed it until it loses interest, he/she is growing pretty fast it sounds like but try to feed more cgd and stay away from the baby food. Crickets every other day is fine.

 

[Izzy's Mom]

Okay, well last night I fed him the dead crickets again, coated in CGD paste, and I decided just to keep offering them until he lost interest. After he ate about 4 medium sized ones, he started to walk away... so I guess he knows when he's full!

I will also try not to mix too much baby food into their diet... but it seems like they won't eat as much if I just use the CGD alone. Usually. I mix quite a bit of the CGD powder into the baby food and I do a 1:5 ratio of chicken:fruit baby food plus a sprinkle of calcium powder too. Once it's all mixed up, I freeze it in cubes so I can thaw them out as needed. Do you think this is sufficient, or do I need to force them to eat just CGD straight with nothing added?