Hey I was just wondering if grounded egg shells are a good substitute for the calcium powder that one would normally buy. I just wanna know if I need to go out and buy some powder or if I can just ground up egg shells.

The short answer is no.

The long answer is... Every well known glider diet uses a specific calcium source which shouldn't be substituted. The calcium the diet uses is calculated into the calcium to phosphorous ratio ( 2:1 ) which we think is the optimum ratio for calcium absorption.

If you change brands or type of calcium you are changing the ratio of the diet and amount of calcium per serving. Which could then be to much or to little, to much is just as dangerous as not enough.

When I was new new, before I understood diets... I read about egg shell calcium and tried to make some. Even when ground a lotttttt it is not fine enough. It's gritty and there are chunks of really sharp as shattered glass shards I wouldn't feed my gliders. Just not worth the effort and risk to save 12 bucks.

The better option is to chose a well known widely used diet like bml or critter love and follow the directions and ingredients exactly with no substitutions UNLESS the creator of the diet specifies a substitution with a suggested comparable substitute.

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Originally posted by Leela

The short answer is no.

The long answer is... Every well known glider diet uses a specific calcium source which shouldn't be substituted. The calcium the diet uses is calculated into the calcium to phosphorous ratio ( 2:1 ) which we think is the optimum ratio for calcium absorption.

If you change brands or type of calcium you are changing the ratio of the diet and amount of calcium per serving. Which could then be to much or to little, to much is just as dangerous as not enough.

When I was new new, before I understood diets... I read about egg shell calcium and tried to make some. Even when ground a lotttttt it is not fine enough. It's gritty and there are chunks of really sharp as shattered glass shards I wouldn't feed my gliders. Just not worth the effort and risk to save 12 bucks.

The better option is to chose a well known widely used diet like bml or critter love and follow the directions and ingredients exactly with no substitutions UNLESS the creator of the diet specifies a substitution with a suggested comparable substitute.

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Ok thank you for your answer. Another thing is that can I just use the rep-cal calcium with d3 instead of buying both rep-cal without d3 and a separate vitamin powder?

Are you making bml? http://bmldiet.com/bml-recipe.html

Bml uses repcal d3 for the calcium and herptivite for the other multivitamins needed in the diet, the diet needs both.

It seems expensive at first but those two ingredients don't need replenished as often, for one or two gliders one bottle of each will last you like a year. The honey and eggs and baby food will need to be bought more often but the powders last a long time so the cost of the diet will actually go down once you have the powders.

https://www.petmountain.com/brand/rep+cal pet mountain is the cheapest place I know of to get them. You need the pink labeled repcal https://www.petmountain.com/product/rep-cal-calcium-with-vitamin-d3-ultrafine-powder and the blue labeled Herptivite https://www.petmountain.com/product/rep-cal-herptivite-with-beta-carotene-multivitamin .

You do NOT need the green labeled repcal calcium.