Busy doesn't mean I get things done...

Goodness GRACIOUS. I've had a super busy last few months. Seems like everywhere there has been a road block, too. I lost a gecko, which has been devastating to me. It put my luii project plans behind a couple years. Hoping to find another girl soon. Although, I have excelled in the other areas with the cave geckos. I planned to have an entire website dedicated to the Goniurosaurus genus out and ready to go by the 15th of this month. Hasn't happened yet, but it's still in the works.  I hope to have it finished with an in-depth look at cave gecko care, species and also natural history. We also funded part of and worked a ton for the Snake Awareness Day in May for the local herp group, wrote an article for a magazine, and started research on foods and nutrition for frugivorous geckos. Doing a wedding cake for a friend this month and Jason is also racing motorcycles this summer. It's taking a lot of my vacation time and energy.
Juggling all these things are beginning to wear on me emotionally to be honest. I've been in denial about it, but after I simply forgot to enter a few photographs into the county fair I realized that I really am stretching it thin. Took a friend to point it out--I even said, "but I feel fine..." Reality is I'm pooped.
We now have a dedicated reptile room. Still working on it, as it's a never-ending work in progress. We need to get a shoe box juvie rack as soon as we can manage. Just have to get the supplies and do it already. It would save a ton of space.
I've begun to focus less on the non-profit and definitely more on my geckos and changes that have been going on with the hobby. At the moment we are switching up some care of the frugivorous geckos. I haven't been extremely happy with the crested gecko diet food we had been using since there was a switch in the formula of it. Geckos hadn't been eating much and were beginning to lose weight. So, we're trying the Pangea Fruit Mix, which the geckos go nuts over. There has been a lot of talk in the gecko world about food and what is best for the geckos and all that lately. I've kept a little bit low on that discussion, choosing to observe everyone else's findings.  I have just been playing around myself with food items by trying what other breeders are doing.
The only trouble with the Pangea Fruit Mix is the fact that it's not complete in nutrition--you HAVE to have live feeders. That is no issue with bug-eating reptiles. In fact, that's great! They eat the PFM like crazy, they eat the bugs, they're complete on nutrition. But I have a few gargoyle geckos that just do not eat the live feeders I offer them.
Solution?!
Do like a few other breeders are doing and create a little roach-smoothie. Mmmm. Smoothies.
Although that sounds horrid to many, I find it easy for me and for my colony. To make it, I calculate how many roaches I typically feed during a roach night, and add 150% of that to my blend. I still feed live to those geckos who enjoy live feeders and I am still offering other food items like the Repashy brand & fruit blends. Papaya and fig have been popular with other breeders' geckos, so I'm giving those a try. The calcium/phosphorous ratio is awesome in those fruits.
Speaking of calcium/phosphorous ratios, I'm looking at getting into some phoenix worms soon. Breeding them, that is. This will be a huge challenge. But I'm looking forward to the trial. We have some mealworms getting ready to get started on their second generation so we'll have roaches, mealies and hopefully phoenix worms. I like the phoenix worm idea since they have a good calcium to phosphorous ratio. Especially when compared to the cockroaches and meal worms. While we don't plan to feed meal worms to our crested geckos, we have several other species of geckos that they are OK to feed including our leopard geckos and cave geckos on occasion. I hope to eventually have all of these feeders available for purchase or trade with my bug-breeding bonanza.
Here's to more growth and learning. And spreading that wealth of knowledge. Hopefully I can get a break here soon and just play with my geckos all day. It would be nice.
Rachel.