Timberline Vita-Bugs® Crickets

About This Product

Why choose Vita-Bugs®?

Existing feeder insect choices do not provide complete nutrition for captive insect eaters, as a result, dusting or gut-loading is necessary. Even when used properly, many existing commercial gut-loading products and dusts do not provide appropriate nutrition. Vita-Bug® insects are fed a modified diet to increase their nutritional content to be more in-line with wild insects.

Insect Dusting and Insect Gut-Loading

Insect Dusting – Dusting insects to provide additional nutrients can lead to inconsistent results since factors such as grooming, the time between dusting and feeding, the palatability of the dust and the particle size of the dust itself all effect how much is actually consumed. In a recent study, crickets groomed off over 50% of the dust applied to it within 2.5 minutes (Li et al 2009). So delivering a specific amount of nutrients is a challenge when relying on dusting alone.

Insect Gut Loading -While properly formulated gut-loading diets can enhance the value of feeder insects, many commercial gut-loading diets either do not contain sufficient nutrients, they use the wrong forms of some nutrients, or they are relatively unpalatable meaning the nutrients don’t get eaten (Finke et al 2005). So again, unless the gut-loading diet is proven through published research, it is difficult to determine if a particular gut-loading diet delivers the right nutrients in the right form for the insectivore.

The Solution...Vita-Bugs®

After years of research and development, the first vitamin and nutrient complete diet* for nourishing feeder insects has been created; Vita-Bugs®. The patent pending feed enhances the content of critical nutrients in feeder insects therefore reducing the need to dust or gut-load. Vita-Bug® insects raised on our patent pending feed have been proven to maintain the increased vitamin and nutrient levels throughout their growing process, unlike most gut-loading or dusting techniques that expel their improvements in short time.

IMPORTANT SHIPPING NOTES:

*Timberline crickets ship directly from the breeder in Marion, IL and are shipped UPS Next Day Air.
These orders CANNOT be combined with any dry goods or other live insect from JoshsFrogs.com.
Orders placed Monday - Thursday by 5pm ET will arrive the next morning.
Orders placed after 5pm ET Thursday through Monday will arrive the following Tuesday.