i think my beardie is getting picky. i usually feed him greens,ie turnip greens, or mustard and/or collards. but sometimes he doesnt like eating those. are there any other things i could feed him. like canned veggies or anything like that? i looked up a website that listed things. here it said on there green beans, so i gave him some. he seemed to like them. im just looking for other ideas. oh ya my beardie is 6 months old today, in case that makes a difference at all. also im slightly running low on crickets, so i want ideas of what to feed him when i run low on crickets since i know as he gets older the % of crickets/veggies changes. when do i know when to give more veggies and less crickets?? i hope ya'll can make sense out of this post/question... thanks!!
Do you vary his diet? I feed Zeus different greens and rotate every week, adding different toppers every day to switch it up so its not boring. I'm not completely sure on this, but some canned or frozen veggies can lose their nutritional value over time so its best to feed fresh stuff, IMO.
i try to vary.sometimes i just dont know whats good to feed him. what do you feed him? and what do you top it with? i know fresh is better, i was just trying to find something good for him to eat since he wasn't eating most of his greens really.
Last week it was romaine lettuce, grated red bell pepper rotated with grated squash. This week it was endive, green bell pepper rotated with oranges and blueberries. I havent had any luck finding mustard greens or anything like that, so its kind of limited for now but Zeus eats them quite well. He really loves oranges but they can make for runny poop so he doesnt get them that often. When he does he picks them out and strikes until he gets too hungry and gobbles the rest of his salad lol. I'm going to start growing my own greens since their not really available here so he has more variety. Anything recommended on the link is good to feed them, if they like it. Zeus doesnt like red bell peppers so thats off the list.
i suppose maybe its me making him not want to eat his greens. i mean if parents just handed plain old veggies to kids, they wouldn't want to eat them. probably the same with him. gotta mix things up a bit, and dress em up a bit as well. i guess i just wasn't thinking like that. and just was putting his greens in and that was that. how do you set yours up? just in a dish inside their tank?
Hi, You say he's 6 months old so he wont eat that much veg in the first place. Think of a pizza when getting food ready, the base, tomato and cheese as basic, then the toppings to make it interesting. I wouldn't use canned food due to the added preservatives etc. frozen is ok but sparingly, peas especially they contain a lot of sugar. Another 6 months or so should see him eat more greens and less crickets. Adults usually eat 20% insects and 80% veg but every beardie is different it's trial and error most of the time. I just leave Sam's food in a shallow dish for him, he's about 8-9 months old now and eating 2 ounces of veg a day along with 20+ locust. He's a pig...:mellow:
I would stay away from romaine as much as possible. Mustard & Collard are great greens. Squash is a huge hit here. Try hand feeding raspberry's thats what I had to do for 1 of my females. After a few days she would see it in my hand and race after it. I took 2 and smashed it and put it on the greens and then took 1 in my hand and dropped it in the feeding dish and WALAH! Got a bite of the greens in there and ate the whole dish. I slowly took out the raspberry's and now we are set on salads. I only use raspberry's once a week as a treat in most cases.
Why avoid romaine it's as good as endive or chicory, good Ca ratio. The USDA site put them in same catagory and same nutrients. Check out "Whats in the food we eat" type in romaine and check the results.
water melon is loved by one of my beardies they like apples grapes lettuce just try different things some times it may take a while for them to eat something different
okay i have only had our bearded dragon for three days, he loves mango, apples, and mustard green and of course crickets too! i had a question about the locusts, i thought they couldn't have anything larger then the width between the eyes, is that the same for locusts, and what about flies, beetles, and other insects? I am trying to learn more and more about them I feed him crickets in the morning and chop up the rest and we are givng him his vitamins every friday on the crickets. He ate 12 just this morning!
She was almost 6 years old. We kept her in a medium-sized aquarium maintained at the temperatures 78-83 degrees with water, uv light, and wooden logs. Her flooring was wood shavings and we fed her once every couple of days defrosted baby mice. She's always lived in this aquarium with the same objects and a clean cage. We changed her diet every year, she started on crickets, then super mealworms with romain lettuce, then live mice and cockroaches, and she has been eating the defrosted baby mice for 8months. She stopped eating about 3weeks ago, then last week she finally ate one mouse, but this morning we found her dead. She didn't die in her sleep and she climbed up on a log that reached to the highest point of the cage. We checked her heat lamp and temperatures, everything was fine. Also, she has been very pale for the passed few days before her death. Her UV light was working fine and she had vitamin powder sprinkled on her mice. She was 6years old, never mated, and we had her since she was a little baby. We can't figure out what we did wrong, and it would put our minds to peace if we knew why she passed. Thank you. ______________________________________ Pallet Racking | Fitflop Boots
If you want a good site to go to for what they can and can't have I would got to beautifuldragons.com They give a list of what to feed as a main diet and then what to feed occasionally, and then stuff that you should never feed!!! I have found it very useful!!!
Am new to this forum but not to Beardies....and especially not to what veg to feed them. I shall quickly fire off a list of what I used to feed mine (had to sell my set up due to personal problems but have recently now got a new hatch/juvie). Please bear in mind that I'm in the UK so names may translate diff to the US or worldwide. Rocket (Arugula?) Parsnips (erm Rutabaga) All colours of Bell Peppers Endive Lambs Lettuce Red Oak Lettuce Red Chard Fresh Basil and Coriander (cilantro?) < VERY strong in smell so good for an enticement Nasturtium Flowers Watercress Butternut Squash Carrot (PLEASE remember to peel Carrot as it has a Mild Arsenic Trace in the skin) Strawberries Raspberries Blueberries Yes,my Dragons ate better veg in their diet than I did or do now! This is not a comprehensive list of what can be eaten by Beardies by any amount.Just what I can remember off the top of my head. If you need some great info on nutritional values such as Calcium content,phosphorous content etc etc then www.beautifuldragons.com has a BRILLIANT list of Veg and their Nutrition contents.....I used it as my base info for feeding plus other info i could find elsewhere.
The one thing I'm worried about in your post above would be > " Her flooring was wood shavings ". I bet they were Aspen and I bet the pet shop you got her form said it was a really good Substrate to keep her on. My initial reaction would be "She's gone for loose Crix and got a mouthful of Wood shavings leading to Impaction over time." Wood shavings or pellets should NEVER be used AT ALL for the reason I stated before. If you think about their Wild habitat then this is Sand Based (Inland Australian Bearded Dragon>since when is the Inland of Australia wood shavings?), however I would even be wary of Snad vs Impaction. Even if you use Childrens Play sand (it's microwave treated to kill any bacteria or virus' in it) there is still a risk of impaction in Beardies. I always use Slate floor tiles in my set ups,it's less messy, wipe clean for spot cleans, holds heat incredibly well,looks great if you can find ones with Fossilised Fern in, mimics rock that beardies also live on,keeps the Nails in good order and you can dump them in the bath for a once a week deep clean without worries of getting sand everywhere.
Thank you for the info Beardy75, but I wouldn't expect a reply back... this post was made in 2009 Thank you though! And welcome to Reptile Rooms/Reptile Boards
