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Posted by Allen Repashy on March 24, 2003 at 21:19:21:
In Reply to: Re: Cresty favors bugs over baby food....... posted by Tegan on March 24, 2003 at 20:40:38:
Hello Tegan,
Dusting with the Diets would work to a degree, but only certain parts would stick because some of them are larger than others. It is not formulated to be used in this way. Dusts are more concentrated by nature because you are only sticking a small percentage by weight to the cricket.
I designed a dust that we have used for a long time at the ranch that is what I call a "Cricket Balancer" T-Rex markets it as the "ICB" series, and has several versions that are really different for marketing puropses only. Any of them will suffice.
I used the dusting data from the above posted methods to see what sticks to a cricket. Then I took the DMB nutritional values of a cricket and plugged it into my feed formulation software as if it the cricket was another ingredient in the formula.
My goal was to "balance" the cricket. For example. the DMV phosphorus value of a cricket is right at 1%. So I calculated how much of what sticks to a cricket needs to be calcium in order to have a 2% stick on a DMB. Using medium crickets, it turns out that a 13% calcium formula sticks 2% calcium to a cricket, thus giving you a 2:1 ratio with phosphorous.
This leaves lots of room for adding protein, other minerals, fat, and vitamins to the mix to again "balance" the value provided by the cricket.
This creates a supplement that is designed to be used on every cricket you feed, rather than calcium one time, vitamins another, ect. My goal was to make it a "no brainer" and remove a lot of the margin for error provided by separate mixes. I used very stable forms of all vitamins, and many natural sources, to reduce the breakdown that is possible from high amounts of minerals in solution with vitamins.
Anyway, I don't want to be accused of "plugging" my diets on here(seems I already have :). I am simply trying to share infomation, and explain why I spent the time to develop the foods, and what was behind it.. I am finishing a detailed description of my other feeds, and will post them to my forum in the next few days..
Allen
