Soft shelled eggs

Q. I use nutrobal for my parrots and I also have chickens which at the moment are laying soft shelled eggs despite everything I have tried,  I was wondering if it was ok to give nutrobal to the chickens as a way to increase the vitamin D3 they are getting.

A. Yes you can use Nutrobal as a Calcium Source for your Chickens.

Nutrobal for tortoise too small to hibernate?

Q. My tortoises are too small to hibernate but are dozy all the time, as they are not eating anything I would like to know if it is possible to put Nutrobal in the water as they bathe.

A. Nutrobal is for dusting on the food, it isn't water soluble. If you are keeping the tortoises awake through the winter you will need a proper vivarium and heat lamp, otherwise they will simply stay half awake not eating and losing weight - just bathing them daily isn't enough. Please contact a local vet for more advise.

Do i need to dust Nutrobal onto food / insects?

Q. I purchased a tub of Nutrobal for regular dusting of crickets for my Leopard & Crested Geckos. Usually my Leopard Geckos are happy to eat a calcium supplement straight from a food bowl, and I was just wondering whether it is safe to use the Nutrobal in a similar fashion?

A. Nutrobal isn't formulated to be fed from a bowl, it is designed for dusting onto food or coating crickets. That means they get the right level of D3 and the other vitamins in Nutrobal. So we suggest dusting all your crickets with Nutrobal and leave access to calcium such as Calci-Dust in the food bowl.

Do i need to use other sources of calcium too?

Q. I wondered if Nutrobal is ok to be the only source of calcium for young veiled chameleon females and whether once a week is sufficient

A. We would recommend Nutrobal and Calci-Dust on alternate feeds. If you only dust once a week then all that happens is that the animal avoids the odd looking white crickets because tomorrow there will be a brown one.

Vitamin D3 deterioration

Q. I keep seeing the bulletin boards say that vitamin D3 deteriorates fast - is it true?

A. Yes, vitamin D3 can deteriorate quickly. We are aware of a lot of debate on this and we have tried to clarify it.

The particular vitamin D3 we use has been tested in harsh conditions - up to 40degC and has been shown to deteriorate at a rate of less than 1% a month. We already include a small overage in the product to compensate for this, so we are confident that meaningful levels are there well beyond the 6-9 months that we recommend as the time you should change to a new pot.

Remember vitamin products are foods and should be replaced with fresh product.