Crickets are the most common meal I feed my leopard gecko. This is because they are available in large numbers to supply the pet trade. They are also cheap meals and are readily available in most local pet stores and online. Apart from buying crickets, you can save money by raising them on your own.
Leopard Gecko Hunting a Cricket
How Many Crickets to Feed a Leopard Gecko?
The number of crickets you feed your Leo will depend on various factors such as frequency, quantity, age, size, activity level, and appetite. Different leopard geckos will feed differently, so you’ll have to feed him and watch how many crickets your leo will eat.
However, for reference, below are some numbers I feed my leopard geckos:
- For newly hatched and younger leopard geckos, you should feed them every day as much as they care to eat. This is because they need the most nutrition when growing up.
- For leos aged between six and eight months, you can reduce the meal frequency to three per week. During this time, feed your leopard gecko five to seven crickets.
- For adult geckos, you can reduce the number of crickets to three to four. The frequency of feeding them would still be three meals every week. If you wish to increase the frequency, you can reduce the number of crickets per meal.
These are just rough numbers because each leopard gecko is different. Once you spend more time with your leopard gecko, you’ll learn to adjust the amount of crickets you feed it to fit its individual metabolism, life stage, and weight gain or loss.
My Leopard Gecko Eating a Cricket
When feeding your leopard gecko, avoid giving it one large meal, as you would with other reptiles like snakes. Instead, the healthy way is to feed it small meals throughout the week. Also, smaller crickets will benefit a younger Leo more than larger ones.
> Recommended Reading: How Often to Feed a Leopard Gecko
Crickets Nutritional Value
Nutrition is among the concerns for most pet owners looking to feed their pets a healthy meal. Crickets, among the popular meals for most lizard owners, are healthy and nutritious. Below is a nutritional analysis of crickets.
- Moisture – 69%
- Fat – 6%
- Protein – 21%
- Fiber – 3%
Compared to other meals you can feed your leopard gecko, crickets are one of the highest protein sources. However, they contain low amounts of nutrients such as calcium, vitamins A, D, and E, thiamin, and other minerals. Because of this, crickets should be supplemented using to improve the concentration of these important nutrients.
Dusting and Gut Loading Crickets
The methods used to improve an insect’s nutrient composition of calcium, vitamins, and other minerals are dusting and gut loading.
Dusting is the easiest method of supplementing crickets compared to gut loading. To dust a cricket:
- Take a small plastic container with a lid.
- Add your calcium, vitamin D3, and other multivitamins, put your crickets inside and shake the container gently.
- Tilt the container to get as much powder on the crickets as possible.
Once dusted, sift the excess powder from the insect so you can reuse it later and offer your leopard gecko a meal without dust drifting through the air. This dust, when breathed into the lungs, can irritate. Feed your leopard gecko one cricket at a time if they are well coated and without excess.
Gut loading involves feeding the crickets a nutritious diet so they become a healthy meal for your pet gecko. To gut load crickets, you should feed them at least 24 hours before feeding them to your lizard or leopard gecko.
Feeding crickets is easy. Provide them with tropical fish food, cut-up fruits, and vegetables, or you can buy commercial ready-made cricket food, which is already loaded with vitamins and minerals, at your local pet shop. The more healthy food you supply to your crickets, the more important nutrients they will pass to your gecko.
