Bought a cup of hornworms for my beardie last week. They arrived that bright turquoise blue colour, and over the last few days several have gone a much more ordinary green. A couple of them are also crawling about restlessly instead of sitting on the chow.
Everything I find when I search is gardeners complaining about tomato plants. Are the green ones still safe to feed, or has something gone wrong in the cup?
The colour change that matters is a different one. Black, brown, mushy or deflated means dead or dying, and those come out of the cup immediately and do not go anywhere near your dragon.
Green and active is fine. Dark, limp or smelly is not. That is the whole decision, and it is about texture and movement as much as colour.
Keep the cup at room temperature and away from any heat. They grow alarmingly fast when warm.
Since you went looking and found gardening articles, the one thing to take from them: do not ever feed a wild hornworm off a tomato or tobacco plant. Those plants carry toxic compounds that the caterpillar takes in, and the insect may also be carrying pesticide or parasites.
Only ever the ones raised as feeders. People make this mistake because the garden ones are free and look identical, and it is a genuinely dangerous saving.
@chow_not_leaves · 2w ago · 3 replies
Nothing has gone wrong. Feeder hornworms are raised on a prepared chow rather than on plants, and that chow is what makes them that turquoise blue. The ordinary green is what you get when a hornworm takes in plant pigments instead, or when the chow changes, or just batch to batch variation between suppliers.
The restless ones are the more interesting part of your post. Wandering plus slowing growth plus going off the chow usually means they are getting ready to pupate.
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@turquoise_cup · 2w ago
If they are heading for pupation, is there any point keeping them or should I just use them up?
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@wandering_worms · 2w ago
Use them up. They will not get any bigger and they stop eating, so holding them loses you the feeder. Most keepers feed those off quickly rather than waiting to see what happens.
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