Mixing Pre-Made Diets: Yes or No?

[Michael]

I ask a lot of questions about feeding and diets - I always have, and it's been more popular at some times than it has at others. I know we've seen a number of new diets pop up over the last 2-3 years, and I've spent the last ~8 months testing many of them. One thing I keep reading is people talking about mixing different diets together to get a stronger feeding response.

As someone who has made my own diet for almost a decade now (and rotated in some others), I've heard concerns from others about having no controls around guaranteed nutritional content, which is true. You do have a guaranteed nutritional analysis when you use a diet 100% as delivered from the maker, and mix/serve it as advised. However, with so many people mixing more than one diet together, you lose the guaranteed nutritional analysis and it does open a different can of worms, not unlike making your own diet.

The diet in particular that led me to ask this is the Leapin' Leachies Chewie Fettuccine. I've fed this diet 3 times with almost no feeding response, and I posted something on facebook asking folks for their opinions and experiences with the diet. A number of people replied that they mix it with other diets for a stronger response. So, when feeding that diet 2 nights ago (Monday), I mixed it half and half with Pangea Growth and Breeding, and threw in some mango nectar. It had a much stronger feeding response... about 1/3 to 1/2 of the food was eaten out of the cups.

My personal opinion is that having to mix and match different ratios of different diets sort of defeats the purpose...? I think chahoua like a variety of food options, so I'm happy to feed my personal diet as well as many variations of the pre-made diets... but when you starting having to buy different flavors or pre-made diets and mix them together to get a desired feeding response, it feels... less efficient to me?

Thoughts?

 

[Canvas_geckos]

I’d like to know, of the people who make the pre-made diets, how many of them actually have nutritional degrees in specific terms of NC reptiles...or are they just guesstimating from their years of keeping these animals. What’s the research say, on wild animals, what percentage of their diet is fruit, what type of fruit, insects, type of insects, have the tissues of these reptiles been studied in depth to learn what percentage of proteins & vitamins/minerals is required daily.

I’d rather see some studies to back up the nutritional value on these packages. Does it exist?

 

[Corey]

I try to summarize my experience with these products here so as not to be repetitive in other posts and concentrate everything in a single answer.
I have been using the LL product for a year with good results. My chahoua eat it both pure and mixed with mango juice, always keeping the ratio 2 liquid parts and 1 part in powder. I have appetite fluctuations but those I think are normal. I also have a good response from auriculatus but above all leachianus. On a rating scale from 1 to 5, chahoua and auriculatus I would put them 3.5-4 and the leachianus 5.
I don't have many animals, so my experience is limiting, and because of my job for now it is easier to use a diet already made than to make one of my own. In addition, in Europe it is quite difficult to find insect flour to make a homemade product.

Looking at the labels of two products, LL fettuccine and pangea fruit mix, the big difference lies in the percentage of proteins contained in each, respectively 28% and 22%.
Unfortunately Pangea does not declare calcium or phosphorus, so it is difficult to compare them, but there is probably a little less calcium.
The ingredients on the label are in descending order, as for all animal product labels. In fact, in LL products, insect flour ranks first while in third or fourth pangea, at the expense of a greater percentage of fruit. As for the other additions, they seem to me more or less superimposable as a position, therefore it can be assumed that they are more or less in very similar quantities.

I therefore believe that by preparing a product that contains 2 parts of water, and a part of powder consisting of 50% pangea and 50% fettuccine, a complete product is still obtained: both in terms of vitamins and minerals, with a percentage of proteins which is an average of the two products (24-25%) and in any case a calcium value slightly higher than a pangea based product.

It would be interesting to make a separate speech on the quality of the proteins contained in the 2 products.
Proteins are not all the same, they are catabolized by the body that uses them in the form of aminocides to then use them in various metabolic processes. it is therefore necessary to have proteins with the most varied and noble amino acid composition possible.
Insect flour is a very complete food from an amino acid point of view, and therefore better than other protein sources. Spirulina is also considered a superfood precisely in view of the fact that it has many noble amino acids.

In conclusion, by providing geckos with a balanced diet of live insects and pre-made meals, you should have a good protein and vitamin and mineral intake, also by mixing two products to have a good palatability.
In a premade-only diet, which in any case I do not consider correct, I would try to favor the best protein product.
But not having really precise studies, as usual, experience is the best solution to evaluate the effectiveness of a correct diet.

 

[LornaRedSky]

I use pangea apricot as a base for most of my feeding. It has a higher fat and protein profile that most of the other non-insect Pangea flavors. I might dress it up with fresh smoothies, or even your recipe or another home-made one, and other formulas to try and change the taste from time to time. I find that the feeding response is universal amongst the species for that one although individuals can go off of it from time to time. The banana flavor is good for feeding response as well and has less protein and fat so I switch to that during the winter and or to mix in when I am using a high-protein formula like Original BPZ or Pangea Breeder formula and increasing feeding response. Or when I am feeding bugs and they will have the higher fat/protein/vitamins from that since I dust with miner all or calcium. Pangea Fig with insects and BPZ Melonistic are popular as well and I feed those by themselves. Mostly I just pay attention to the amount of fat and protein that they are getting and the season since the mineral and vitamin profiles should be relatively similar except for Breeder formula. As far as losing the guaranteed analysis-it's good to know what we are feeding and have that info available but at the end of the day I am not convinced that we have a guaranteed outcome from any of these diets, everything I have seen so far indicates we are making educated guesses about optimal diets for these guys in captivity. So mixing it up and not 100% relying on any one profile as the "best" is a safer alternative to me.

 

[Michael]

I’d like to know, of the people who make the pre-made diets, how many of them actually have nutritional degrees in specific terms of NC reptiles...or are they just guesstimating from their years of keeping these animals. What’s the research say, on wild animals, what percentage of their diet is fruit, what type of fruit, insects, type of insects, have the tissues of these reptiles been studied in depth to learn what percentage of proteins & vitamins/minerals is required daily.

I’d rather see some studies to back up the nutritional value on these packages. Does it exist?

Unfortunately, I don't think so. Even most of the field animals that were collected were put into preservation and not really fully necropsied, if my memory serves me correctly.

 

[Michael]

I try to summarize my experience with these products here so as not to be repetitive in other posts and concentrate everything in a single answer.
I have been using the LL product for a year with good results. My chahoua eat it both pure and mixed with mango juice, always keeping the ratio 2 liquid parts and 1 part in powder. I have appetite fluctuations but those I think are normal. I also have a good response from auriculatus but above all leachianus. On a rating scale from 1 to 5, chahoua and auriculatus I would put them 3.5-4 and the leachianus 5.
I don't have many animals, so my experience is limiting, and because of my job for now it is easier to use a diet already made than to make one of my own. In addition, in Europe it is quite difficult to find insect flour to make a homemade product.

Looking at the labels of two products, LL fettuccine and pangea fruit mix, the big difference lies in the percentage of proteins contained in each, respectively 28% and 22%.
Unfortunately Pangea does not declare calcium or phosphorus, so it is difficult to compare them, but there is probably a little less calcium.
The ingredients on the label are in descending order, as for all animal product labels. In fact, in LL products, insect flour ranks first while in third or fourth pangea, at the expense of a greater percentage of fruit. As for the other additions, they seem to me more or less superimposable as a position, therefore it can be assumed that they are more or less in very similar quantities.

I therefore believe that by preparing a product that contains 2 parts of water, and a part of powder consisting of 50% pangea and 50% fettuccine, a complete product is still obtained: both in terms of vitamins and minerals, with a percentage of proteins which is an average of the two products (24-25%) and in any case a calcium value slightly higher than a pangea based product.

It would be interesting to make a separate speech on the quality of the proteins contained in the 2 products.
Proteins are not all the same, they are catabolized by the body that uses them in the form of aminocides to then use them in various metabolic processes. it is therefore necessary to have proteins with the most varied and noble amino acid composition possible.
Insect flour is a very complete food from an amino acid point of view, and therefore better than other protein sources. Spirulina is also considered a superfood precisely in view of the fact that it has many noble amino acids.

In conclusion, by providing geckos with a balanced diet of live insects and pre-made meals, you should have a good protein and vitamin and mineral intake, also by mixing two products to have a good palatability.
In a premade-only diet, which in any case I do not consider correct, I would try to favor the best protein product.
But not having really precise studies, as usual, experience is the best solution to evaluate the effectiveness of a correct diet.

@Corey, your posts are so insightful and thoughtful. Thank you for these contributions!