Grinding up Dry Foods

[manderkeeper]

Just wanted to pass on the way I do it. I use a Mr. Coffee Coffee Grinder. There are three settings: Fine, Medium, and Coarse. I use the fine setting. While I don't know of any studies, I believe grinding foods up allows insects to take in more food. My hypothesis for this is based on my experience with green iguanas. When I feed whole, leafy vegetables they eat far less than when I run those vegetables through a food chopper first. I've also heard a hypothesis that all those little cuts in the vegetables allows more surface space for bacteria to break down the vegetables. I cannot say if this holds true for insects, but it would make sense to me.

I've found grinding the food to be beneficial for adding some variety of foods to things like rice beetles. I just grinded up about an ounce of reptomin for my worms, so I'll see how they like it, though I would like to find something more plant based as that would seem more natural. Maybe I'll grind some iguana pellets!