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Thread: Housefly nutrition ??

  1. #1
    fish4all
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    Default Housefly nutrition ??

    Aside from being hard to gut load, do houseflies have much nutritional value at all? My frogs love anything that flies, moths get them racing all over the terrarium to catch them and when I added flies they went simply nuts. I plan to have roach colonies but it will be a while until the colony becomes big enough to supply a steady food source.

    I have a lot of different ways to gut load flies as best as you can but if anyone has any suggestions to help add to their nutrition value it would be appreciated, aside from the obvious dusting.

    Sorry if this has been covered but a dozen searches on here and I am no closer to the answer. Google searches provided no answers.

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  3. #2
    Moderator JeffreH's Avatar
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    Default Re: Housefly nutrition ??

    They certainly have a nutritional value to them - flies are a pivotal food source for many insectivores in nature. It isn't uncommon to see protein levels increase in an adult fly vs. the larval counterpart due to expression of scleretin anyway.

    That being said - house flies pretty much feed on anything. Just offer moist organic products and they'll feed feed on the bacterial coatings and will suck up anything they can be digested from their secretions. I'd wager this is probably limited to simple sugars, seeing as adults need no energy for growth, but I'm not entirely sure about the specific dietary needs of Musca sp. Throw fruits and what have you in there and they will suck up what they please - but don't count on them having a package full of gutloaded material like you'd expect in roaches, crickets, etc. Not necessarily a bad thing though, just the way they work ; )
    -Jeff Howell
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    "If you give, you begin to live." -DMB

  4. #3
    Super Moderator flybyferns's Avatar
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    Default Re: Housefly nutrition ??

    Thought you might be interested in reading the "visitor message" ( and attached article) from findiviglio,yesterday.
    Coincidentally...on this topic regarding house flies and feeding.
    I'm always picking his brain

    http://www.frogforum.net/members/flybyferns.html

    Jeff....If you get a chance to read this; there is an alternate suggestion to use a "freeze dried" house fly food
    (a Zoo-Med product) for herps and reptiles that do not need live feeders. My immediately though was whether this product
    ( or therefore any dried product) could be ground into a powder and dusted onto crickets? I'll ask Frank too. (http://www.frogforum.net/members/findiviglio.html ) what he thinks.http://www.frogforum.net/members/findiviglio.html

    What do you think?

    Another of Frank's articles re house files:
    http://blogs.thatpetplace.com/thatre...invertebrates/

    http://www.frogforum.net/members/findiviglio.html
    also see this recent thread:
    http://www.frogforum.net/food-feeder...-bad-ugly.html

    I could be over thinking it !

    Lynn
    Last edited by flybyferns; January 10th, 2013 at 07:29 PM.
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  5. #4
    fish4all
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    Default Re: Housefly nutrition ??

    Well it helped a lot, thank you. I ordered my fly pupae today, both housefly and blue bottle fly. Hopefully they will all hatch over a month and my frogs will fill up on them.

    I am gonna try gut loading a little bit just to try it. Sugar, honey and baby cereal mix most likely. Is what some article I find use for breeding them so it should work to feed them some more nutrition before the frogs go racing all over the tank chasing them.

    Maybe I will try my hand at culturing them someday. I don't know if I can beat $20 for 2000 flies even if I did. I think that the materials and food might be more than that but never know unless I try.

  6. #5
    Moderator JeffreH's Avatar
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    Default Re: Housefly nutrition ??

    Hey Lynn - I wouldn't think dusting other feeders with freeze-dried flies would be all that beneficial; essentially just adding more insect to the meal. It would probably be more beneficial to the animal to dust with a limiting nutrient of some kind that is lacking in the already insectivorous diet. Calcium is useful because insects are notoriously phosphorus heavy, and multivitamin supplementation is useful as well. I'm sure you could incorporate this idea into the diets of nectar feeding or fruit feeding herps as a protein supplement to the diet though = )

    Keep us posted on your flies Christopher - I wish you the best in trying out this new feeder!
    -Jeff Howell
    ReptileBoards ( Branched from The Reptile Rooms )
    "If you give, you begin to live." -DMB

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