Leopard geckos are considered one of the easiest lizards to cater to. However, unlike other lizards, such as bearded dragons and iguanas, leopard geckos do not feed on plant-based foods or vegetables. They rely solely on insects, such as crickets and mealworms, for nutrition.
However, the challenging part about feeding these reptiles is that you need to know the frequency, quantity, and size of cricket to feed your lizards.
The size, frequency, and quantity of crickets to feed your leopard geckos will depend on their age. Baby leopard geckos should consume pinhead crickets to 0.25 inches in size. Juveniles eat crickets that are 0.375 to 0.625 inches. Adults over ten months should be fed crickets that are 0.75 to 1 inch long.
What Food Do Leopard Geckos Eat?
As mentioned earlier, these lizards get their nutrients from insects and small animals. However, they are usually fed on insects such as crickets and mealworms in captivity.
However, these are not the only insects that your lizards can consume. They can also eat cockroaches, sow bugs, silkworms, wax worms, beetles, butter worms, and tomato hornworms.
Superworms and waxworms shouldn’t be fed to leopard geckos as a staple since they contain high-fat content. Feeding your lizards too many of these insects can lead to obesity. Therefore, you should provide them with these insects at least once a week.
Other insects that should be offered as a treat are butter worms since they also contain too much fat.
They also come with calcium that can make your lizards addicted to the extent that they’ll refuse to eat anything else. Remember, leopard geckos don’t eat plant-based foods, so don’t give them vegetables or fruits.
How Many Crickets Should Your Leopard Gecko Eat?
The number of crickets your leopard gecko should eat is based on weight, age, size, and health. Essentially younger geckos will need to eat more crickets than adults. The rule of thumb is to let your lizard eat as much as possible in 10 to 15 minutes.
Typically, your leopard gecko will eat two perfect-sized insects for each inch of its body. If you keep an eye on your scaly friend during meal times, you can gauge how much they eat per serving. And since leopard geckos may overeat and get some health complications, such as impaction and obesity, you must control the portion size.
How Many Crickets and How Often Should You Feed Hatchlings and Baby Leopard Geckos?
During this growth stage, hatchlings and baby dragons need a lot of energy and nutrients to grow. Therefore, they’ll consume more crickets than juvenile and adult leopard geckos.
You should serve your baby leopard geckos with 4-8 crickets per feeding. This will ensure that they get enough nutrients to facilitate rapid growth. You’ll need to feed your hatchlings and baby geckos every day.
How Many Crickets and How Often Should Juveniles Eat?
Juveniles will also eat 5-8 crickets per feeding, but unlike baby leopard geckos, they only need to be fed 4 to 5 times a week. Since juveniles are also undergoing transformational body changes, they will need to eat more often than adults.
However, they don’t need to be fed daily like the hatchlings and baby geckos. You need to cut the number of crickets you feed your juvenile geckos they grow. However, as the lizard matures, you’ll need to increase the portion size.
How Many Crickets and How Often Should Adult Leopard Geckos Eat?
Only fully grown leopard geckos should be fed on large crickets. If crickets are your gecko’s staple food, you can give them 5-8 large crickets per serving.
However, unlike baby and juvenile leopard geckos, adults must be fed 2 or 3 times a week. Adult leopard geckos’ growth rate is slow, and thus don’t require immense amounts of nutrients in their bodies.
Another common way of feeding adult leopard geckos is to let them eat as much as possible in 10-15 minutes. Although leopard geckos are prone to overfeeding, they only overeat when food if you leave food inside the cage for longer.
However, the only way to know whether your leopard gecko is overeating is to monitor how much it eats in 10-15 minutes. You’ll need portion control if your lizard is greedy and eats more than 8 insects in 10 minutes.
What Cricket Size Should Your Leopard Gecko Eat?
The size of cricket you feed your leopard gecko will be based on their stage of development. Since leopard geckos have three growth stages; baby, juvenile, and adult, they’ll need crickets of different sizes at each stage of development.
The rule of thumb is to ensure that the crickets you feed your leopard gecko should not be larger than the space between its eyes. You’ll find three types of crickets in most pet shops; small, medium, and large. However, other stores offer up to 7 to 8 cricket sizes.
Here is how you should feed your leopard geckos:
- Baby geckos: If you own a baby gecko, it should eat crickets that are not more than 0.25 inches
- Juvenile geckos: Since they are a little bit bigger, they can consume crickets that are about 0.375 to 0.625 inches
- Adult Geckos: Mature leopard geckos can eat adult-sized crickets that are 1 inch in size.
Check out this chart on the right cricket size to feed your leopard gecko at different growth stages.
| Leopard Gecko Development Stage | Cricket Size (Inches) | Cricket’s Age |
| Baby Geckos (0-4 months) | 0.25 | Below 2 weeks |
| Juvenile Geckos (4-10 months) | 0.625 | Below 3.5 weeks |
| Adult Geckos (10+ months) | 1 | Above 4 weeks |
Are Freeze Dried Crickets Good For Leopard Geckos?
Most leopard gecko owners want to know whether they can feed their leopard geckos freeze-dried crickets. Leopard geckos can be tricked into eating freeze-dried crickets, but they prefer live crickets that give them the adrenaline rush when hunting them down.
Your leopard gecko might refuse to eat freeze-dried insects until you devise brilliant ways to make them savor them.
Why Freeze-Dried Crickets Aren’t a Good Staple Food for Leopard Geckos?
- Nutritional value: Freeze-dried foods don’t have much to offer in terms of nutrition compared to live feeder crickets.
- Freeze-dried crickets don’t have moisture: As we all know, lizards are not great drinkers and mostly rely on water from their food to stay hydrated. Therefore, feeding your geckos dried insects can make them thirsty and dehydrated.
- Dried insects don’t move or wiggle: Leopard geckos are attracted to the sounds and movements made by live crickets. This means that if your leopard gecko is picky, it won’t have the drive to eat dried insects that don’t move around or wiggle. It will ignore the food in the bowl and won’t have any motivation to eat it.
Therefore, if you want to feed your leopard geckos with freeze-dried crickets, you should offer them as a treat. Offering dried food as a treat isn’t a bad idea, but since these scaly friends prefer to hunt down insects and eat them, they won’t enjoy dried food.
Are Freeze-Dried Crickets Good for Baby Leopard Geckos?
Baby geckos need a lot of nutrients and energy because they are at a stage where they experience rapid growth and development. They need to savor insects such as crickets every day. Unfortunately, these creatures shouldn’t eat freeze-dried crickets.
This is because babies need to savor insects with various nutrients and moisture, which freeze-dried insects don’t have. While freeze-dried contain high protein, fat, and fiber content, they lack enough calcium/phosphorus and moisture content.
Since baby geckos need a diet with all essential minerals, feeding them freeze-dried crickets can lead to deficiencies.
Also, freeze-dried crickets have high chitin content, making them difficult to swallow and digest. Because the baby gecko’s digestive system is yet to develop fully, serving them freeze-dried foods can lead to impaction or other digestive issues.
Should You Offer Freeze-Dried Crickets Together With Live Crickets?
One way to trick your leopard gecko into eating freeze-dried crickets is to mix them with live ones. The lizards will hunt the crickets that are hoping and moving around and also savor the mobile insects without considering whether they are alive.
However, avoid leaving any freeze-dried crickets in the cage, as they’ll decay and start producing a foul smell. Conversely, live crickets should also be removed as they can nib or bite the leopard gecko when it’s sleeping or relaxing, causing injuries that might lead to infections.
Can Leopard Gecko Eat Too Many Crickets?
Leopard geckos have large appetites and can overeat any sumptuous food offered. If you leave many crickets inside the leopard gecko’s terrarium, the lizards may eat all of them. This is why it’s crucial to know the size, amount, and number of times you should feed your leopard gecko.
The worst part is that overeating can lead to three types of health conditions:
Fatty Liver Disorder and Obesity
Like all other animals, overeating in leopard geckos will lead to weight gain and obesity. Although crickets have low-fat content compared to other insects, they introduce too many calories into the gecko’s system when consumed in bulk.
If your reptile friend overeats crickets, fat deposits will accumulate over time in the coelomic cavity and might overwhelm its organs. When the fats build up affects the liver, it leads to fatty liver disorder (hepatic lipidosis), which can be fatal.
Impaction
Naturally, crickets boast low dietary fiber and thus are highly digestible and ideal for leopard geckos. However, leopard geckos can still suffer impaction if they eat too many crickets. While crickets may have low dietary fiber, their exoskeleton can form a food bolus when lizards overfeed.
The boluses won’t sail through the digestive system smoothly and might cause digestive issues.
Additionally, crickets tend to hide under the substrate more than the rest of the feeder insects. As the gecko tries to hunt them down, they can swallow substrate particles, which may cause impaction.
Metabolic Bone Disease
One of the drawbacks of crickets as a feeder is that they boast an imbalanced calcium-to-phosphorus ratio. When you feed your leopard gecko on crickets without supplementing or offering other dietary options, they won’t absorb calcium and may suffer from metabolic bone disease.
Inherently, leopard geckos should be offered food with a Ca:P ratio of 1:1 to 2:1. However, the Ca:P ratio in crickets is 1:9, meaning that it must be corrected through supplementation and diversification.
If your leopard gecko eats too many crickets, the calcium and phosphorus ratio imbalance will impede calcium absorption, leading to geckos using the calcium reserved in their skeletal muscles. This will consequently lead to metabolic bone disease.
How to Tell Leopard Gecko Is Eating the Correct Number of Crickets?
The easiest way to tell whether you have been serving your leopard gecko with the correct number of crickets is to monitor body conditions and have a feeding diary. Lizard owners must take measurements and weigh their leopard geckos every two weeks.
If they are growing slower, you’re underfeeding them. If they gain too much weight, you’re giving them too much food. Essentially, leopard geckos have certain development milestones at different growth stages.
Hatchlings and baby leopard geckos should increase by 3 inches and 10 grams per month.
Juveniles should increase by 0.5 inches in size and 10 grams each month
Female adult geckos should measure 7- 8, and male geckos 7 to 12 inches and weigh around 40 to 90 grams.
If you discover that your leopard gecko is gaining extra weight or adding more than recommended inches, you’re giving too many crickets and vice versa. If their growth is within the appropriate range, you’re giving your lizards the correct amount of food and vice versa.
Final Verdict
As detailed in our guide, the frequency, size, and number of crickets you give your leopard gecko are determined by their growth and development stage. Baby dragons should feast on small crickets, juveniles on middle-sized crickets, and adult geckos on large crickets.
Experts reiterate that the size of the cricket being fed to a leopard gecko should be the same as the distance between its eyes.
Leopard geckos enjoy eating live crickets as the hunting part gets them excited. However, they can be offered freeze-dried crickets as treats, even though it will take some effort and convincing to get them to savor them.