Wild Caught Insects

Yuk

Yuk

New member
How would you go about minimizing the risks of wild caught insects if you collected them from your own backyard and never fertilized or used pesticides or any other chemicals? (I have chickens, so that's not an option). I have a series of questions for anyone willing to take a crack at them..

1. So you know the whole -- if you disinfect everything and use hand sanitizer for your children that they are more likely to get allergies study? Here's a webMD thing about what I mean: Are We Too Clean? Letting Kids Get Dirty and Germy
Okay, now apply that to leopard geckos in a sanitized environment all their lives. Are they more prone to illness later because they have not been building their immune systems growing up?

2. If you breed wild caught insects and only feed the babies, would that necessarily reduce the parasite load or would the babies get parasites from the parents?

3. Is there any type of quarantine that can be done to allow the parasites to die off in the insects or any type of safe medication you can administer to reduce the parasite load of the insect before feeding it?

I am just curious :) Please don't rip my head off for the topic lol
 
Aimless

Aimless

Super Moderator
there's already a lot of great information here in this forum.

link 1

link 2

and there are others. these were just the 2 I pulled up easily.

my concern would be something that's commensal in your chickens infecting your reptiles? or, if your bugs are wandering over from the neighbor's, who might use chemicals in his yard :)

also, if you want cheap and easy feeders, have you tried to grow roaches? you can get several different kinds, and they're very easy to keep growing and breeding.
 
Yuk

Yuk

New member
I didn't think about the chickens possibly infecting the geckos! Thanks for the tip! I'm going to look into that.

The bugs are most likely living for a long period in my backyard because we have a concrete wall surrounding the area I plan to collect in. It's definitely possible at some point in their life they came from somewhere else, but I would be willing to bet that most of the bugs in our yard have been there at least a few months - and if they survived the winter, maybe even for a year.

As for the roaches - I have an extraordinary fear of them. I can't even pick them up if I see one dead. We have a HUGE roach problem in this town (which is also why I would never collect a roach on purpose -- the roaches can come from anywhere and have probably been exposed to all sorts of nasty stuff).

Thanks for the links! I'll read them now. I did do a google search, which usually brings up this forum's threads, but it didn't for this topic.
 
Aimless

Aimless

Super Moderator
I'd recommend just sifting through the feeder & nutrition subforum. there's pages of threads in there.
 
C

Completeleopard

New member
I just wouldn't recommend using wild caught bugs to be honest.

Parasites the biggest concern, any manner of parasites could be infecting the insects. The trouble is is that any bug could have wondered over from another place that uses chemicals, died, the bugs could have then eaten that bug and been infected themselves. In believe there are just to many variables to be sure the wild bugs won't hurt your Gecko
 
Yuk

Yuk

New member
The parasites -- any heavy load of them or particularly nasty ones -- concern me -- but I don't want to give up on providing a varied diet if there might be a way to mitigate that risk.
 
C

Completeleopard

New member
The only way to reduce the parasite load would be to breed them and I would guess eventually that the parasite load would reduce. However, they will still have parasites and captive bred Leo's immune system obviously is not stronger than wild caught leopard gecko's, so unless you are 100% certain they are safe, I would recommend not risking it!
 
Aimless

Aimless

Super Moderator
you might also kill normal flora. I would not apply that to reptiles in any case; the same foods may or may not do the same things.

I would be interested in trying this myself, after reading Frank's article. I also happen to live in a place with a very small amount of indigenous herps. we have a ton of garter snakes in the area, but none anywhere in my neighborhood in the city. I think your chances of parasites infecting reptiles are going to be higher if you have more native species hanging around.
 
Yuk

Yuk

New member
Interesting read. I was thinking something more along the lines of panacur like we use for fish with parasites, but I don't know if it is too strong for insects or what an equivalent would be. Or what type of difference it makes. Or if the captive bred geckos introduced to a wild diet early might build their immune systems to tolerate it.

We do have a few lizards here and there but not in our backyard. Just the chickens and bugs. And an ocassional stray cat.
 
hmarie186

hmarie186

New member
Frank writes several articles on wild caught insects and addresses the risk of parasites. Correct me if I'm mistaken but several wild caught species of insects are fed at the Bronx Zoo where he used to work for over 20 years and autopsies of deceased animals did not provide any evidence of parasites from ingesting them. Just feed species that are safe that you know are free of pesticides. I have a sow bug log that I pick off for mine. We've done moths but he's not really interested.
 
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