[AmityvilleHams]

Mealworms may work fine, but chicken would be a better source of protein as mealworms are very high in fat(not ideal for daily use for hamsters). Freeze dried mealworms have dubious nutritional value too despite the numbers on many packages since a lot of the valuable nutrition from fresh mealworms that are gut loaded cannot be kept in the dried form. I know a lot of people here use them and recommend them, but knowing they're basically the outer part of a mealworm(something found quite problematic in the hedgehog communities along with their nutritional value being severely questioned to say the least among some reptile communities) I can't in good conscience consider them anywhere near equal to live or freshly killed gut loaded mealworms or a high quality protein such as freeze dried chicken or even freeze dried shrimp(both of which retain nutritional value even when freeze dried - mealworms are very unusual in that aspect). There are other freeze dried meats available besides chicken though!