2 questions

[Josh and ninja]

Its the end of the outdoor grow season for hemp cbd and cannibis. Our little one likes to rip into stalks to find if a worm is inside them. So we bought live meal worms from pet smart and she lobes them so much. I know its ok for them to eat them i just wondered if there us a daily balance to not give her to many.
Also having an issue with water. She has refused to use her pet store water bottle. She is free roam enless we both go out than ninja is put in her day nest house. Has a standard glass bottle with steel ball drinker. She is free roam when young she chose to build a nest directly next to our bed. She will hrab a watter bottle like poland spring and let me know she wants water so i have one with little holes om cap she would drink out of them for last few years now she ignored her glass all together and wont let me give her the drip from poland spring lately only way she will drink is if i fill cap full and she drinks loke a dog out a bowl but if her nose gets wet she needs to go whipe it come back for more. I want ro make sure with this change in behavior that she stays properly hydrated. Any suggestions welcome

[Chirps]

Hi! I wouldn't know about the mealworms, but as to the water maybe she just prefers to drink from a bowl now. I have bowls outside on a picnic table that my wilds utilize. I'm guessing a heavy base will be less tipsy if she should mess with it. As for what to put in her cage for the times she has to be in, same idea with maybe a "roof" of sorts over it to lessen the chance of her getting poo in it?

[CritterMom]

Buy a ceramic water dish from the pet store - check the pocket pet aisle. You want a round glass bowl with straight sides. To prevent the "nose full of water" part until she fully understands how it works, fill the dish with either clean, smooth stones or even better, glass marbles. Fill with water so it in a quarter inch or so above the marbles. They provide weight and thus stability, and they stop them from shoving their whole face in the dish.

Meal worms are very high in phosphorus. I don't know how much reading you have done on TSB, but likely you have run into info on Metabolic Bone Disease (MBD) which is a low calcium issue that can be deadly. Without going into exhausting detail, phosphorus and calcium in the diet are linked. The more phosphorus consumed, the more calcium is needed to counteract it. If that isn't done, they will develop MBD. It is way easier to balance things beforehand than to try to fix them after you have a sick squirrel.

You can sprinkle the mealworms with calcium powder, but mealworms are the larvae of a beetle, and so have hard, shiny exoskeletons like beetles have. Nothing sticks to them, including calcium powder. Waxworms are the larvae of a moth - they are caterpillars, and like all caterpillars, they have soft bodies that CAN be dusted.

I wouldn't feed more than a few of them a day, and would strongly suggest if you are not doing so to feed your squirrel the Henry's blocks (https://henryspets.com/diets/) which have been designed to be a vitamin and mineral supplement as well as a food so as to help keep her nutrition in line.

[Spanky]

"A healthy balance is a Ca:P of 2:1, 1:1 or at most 1:2. Higher amounts of phosphorus cause problems - meal worms are between 1:7 and 1:11 unless they have been specifically bred and gut fed to increase calcium levels but that doesn't guarantee correct levels once provided as food."

Meal worms Ca:P is much the same as nuts... treats only kind of food.

[KCullen]

I attempt to teach my squirrels to hunt and appreciate the bounty of nature's bug population prior to their release with crickets and dubia or similar roaches. I can buy them in advance and give them calcium gut load blocks and/or gel so the insect is loaded with good stuff for the kids while they attempt (poorly) to hunt on their own. You can hand them a cricket first to develop the taste, but I've yet to find a squirrel or rat who doesn't love mealworms, crickets, roaches, and the like. Roachaes have less chitin, more fat, and more protein than crickets, so be mindful of this when offering them.