Hard food (a half year portion)

It is also recommended to feed them with the larvae of the witch doctor beetle, cockroaches.

You can replace it with:

• Raw or cooked meat. Lean meat is one of the alternative protein feeds used by some myrmekeepers not only in the spring, but in general. It is preferable to choose chicken, as it is more tender and less fatty. If you feed them raw meat, then it should be divided into small pieces so that it is easier for the ants to cut it themselves (for reference: the “meat” of insects is more tender than its counterparts from the vertebrate world, so the mandibles of ants have difficulty cutting the fibers of ordinary meat, but they deal with the flesh of arthropods much faster). Before cutting, the meat should be washed under running warm water to get rid of excess fat again. It cannot be said with certainty that fat is dangerous for ants, but there is little that is pleasant in it either, so it is advisable to always get rid of it.
• Boiled egg. This is a more dietary product than meat, because the egg is much more tender and easier for ants to cut. Moreover, according to many myrmekeepers, their pets prefer eggs to meat, therefore, they find it more delicious. When feeding eggs, both the white and the yolk are used, but the yolk is most often fed. The main thing in this matter is not to give too much, otherwise the thrifty ants will drag all the pieces of the egg into the anthill, and what they do not eat, they will stuff into the cracks and stick on the walls of the formicarium. In this case, the uneaten egg will go bad and can cause mold. With an egg, though not with a boiled one, there is another interesting way of feeding. For this, raw egg white is mixed with sugar or honey, and this mixture, placed in a drinker / feeder, feeds the ants. However, this method is more effective for feeding single queens and colonies without larvae, because separate feeding, when adults eat carbohydrates and larvae eat protein, gives better results. But this option is quite capable of stimulating the development of an ant colony that is under stress.
• Shrimp. In fact, this is the same gammarus, only not dehydrated. Many species of ants like boiled shrimp meat, because its composition is close to insects, spiders and other components of the natural protein diet. The type of shrimp when feeding is not significant, but tender small species of these crustaceans are better consumed. Ants really like not only boiled shrimps, but also raw (live) ones, if you combine myrmecology with aquarium keeping and growing ornamental crustaceans, which sometimes tend to die or be maimed by their relatives – these are the ones that can be caught and fed to ants. The main disadvantage of shrimps is that they are quite expensive food.