Many people believe the deformity's are caused by inbreeding in the colonies But it is actually a calcium deficiency in the colony. Many people wrongly believe all they need to feed insect colony's is carrots and wheat bran, even the commercial producers of feeder insects only use carrots and wheat bran exclusively because they are cheap, but they are very poor sources of calcium and protine.
If the colony is not given good sources of calcium then the only way they can get calcium is by eating small mealworms, dead insects and shedded skins. calcium is very important to insect development as there exoskeleton is made up of mostly calcium so if they are defishant the exoskeleton becomes deformed as they dont have the required calcium to produce it.
The eggs beetles lay are also made up of calcium so low calcium = low egg production.
Morioworm Beetles are more susceptible to this as they will not pupate after a certain time like mealworms and have to be separated to begin pupation and will continue to shed there exoskeleton every so often losing calcium every time.
worms will grow a lot faster and pupate a lot faster is give calcium and protein sources, with huge increases in pupateing times for morioworms.
High Grade Insects is working on a large morioworm kit with lots of improvements coming soon.
We will also be supplying a tub of calcium in every order from now on.
For a cheap source of calcium powder search "limestone flour" on ebay for approx 5GBP for a bag of 2kg. It is commonly fed to horses. Also can be purchased cheap from farm shops as with 20kg bags of wheat bran for 15GBP a bag.
Thank you
HGI
Image credit- https://www.reddit.com/user/its_tea-gimme-gimme posted on https://www.reddit.com/r/insectbreeding
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