Freddie

[den]

Freddie still refuses to eat whole meal worms, so tonight I squeezed the wormy goodness onto a plastic spoon so he wouldn't have any crunchy bits to worry about. Then I folded a piece of coth around him so he couldn't move and dipped his nose into the mush. He had to lick his face to clean it, and that made more slide down the spoon into his face, so he had to lick more. I estimate he ate the guts of 7 worms; not bad, but it would be better if he ate the cruchny bits too.

At one point he took in a long bit of worm intestine. He paused, flicked his head, and resumed eating. The guts landed on the end of my nose. Since I had a bat in one hand and a spoon in the other I had to wait until he'd finished and was put away before I could remove it.

Little bastard did it on purpose.

Comments

[zhenzhi.livejournal.com]

lol! :-)

[weyrdbird.livejournal.com]

"One of these days, POW! Right in the kisser!" :)

[tatterdemalion.livejournal.com]

yeah, thats deliberate!

[jim-lane.livejournal.com]

He's smart. Makes YOU do all the "chewing" for him; he just gets the "good stuff"---

BLEAH!!!! }-p

[tigermorph.livejournal.com]

Good aim Freddie!

[frith]

What size meal worms are these? I believe we give our big brown bats about 20 small meals worms each to keep their weight at a sprightly 18 grams. Do you think your bat would show a little more enthusiasm for moths, mayflies and the like? Your porch light might attract moths at night?

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

The worms I'm reying to start him on are only 10mm long, so they're quite small. The squeezed guts are from larger worms over 20mm long. 10mm worms don't have enough to squeeze but I'm chopping them into little bits and adding them to the mush so he's not getting a pure smoothie. Mayflies are non-existant here, and the drought has knocked the moth population down too far. I have to rely on meal worms as the primary food. I've been feeding them carrots and leafy greens, and added a high-protien insectivore powder to their bran so I hope they have a high nutritional value.

Freddie at full adult weight will be 5 grams. He's 3 now so he's quite thin. When he's a little fatter I'll put him in a bat-tent (approx 1 cubic foot in size) so he has room to stretch and flap. I really need to get to work on the new flight aviary.

[frith]

Your meal worms are minute! Our small ones are about 20 -25mm, and our tenebrion "superworms" are about 50mm. How's your cricket population? You might want to try cricket guts. We have a geriatric fat-tailed gecko who no longer accepts meal worms and will only eat freshly killed crickets.

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

All my crickets died in a cold-snap. I have to re-start my colony.