Warning: On hand feeding.

[omg87]

Hand feeding is an awesome way to bond with your dragon, but as I found out today, too much of a good thing is actually kind of funny/bad.

Every time I dump crickets in the tank, I start off with hand feeding my beardie 3-5 crickets - dumping the rest. For about a month, this was working and today he jumped on my hand to get out of the tank. The problem? He thinks my finger is edible. The bite doesn't hurt at all and it feels like someone gave it a light flick, but still. Avoid hand feeding too much!

 

[bunnyrut]

i would let the cricket sit on my hand and he would grab it that way.
but i learned early on not to hold anything he finds tasty between my fingers. it was fine when he was a baby, but now his mouth is much much bigger...

 

[omg87]

So now that I've gone and messed that up, how do I teach him that my finger isn't food??

 

[bunnyrut]

let him bite it. if you are brave enough. muahahaha.

or you can try putting your finger to his nose, then flattening your entire hand in front of him and flipping it around to show the back and palm. let him see there is no food. when he licks your finger it should register that it's not food.

but if you start using tweezers to feed he should start to associate that with food and bite those instead of your finger.

 

[TheDragonKeepers]

We had the same problem with Hyphen and Jam for a while - Jam gets VERY excitable about food. And just as Bunny recommended, I showed them there was no food, just my hand - then used tongs to serve up the canned dinners. With time and practise, I can now safely hand feed without problems - treats I serve with fingers, and if I get nipped, the treat goes away.

They soon learn pinpoint perfect accuracy!
(Sandy can flip a waxworm out of my finger and thumb without so much as brushing them - she's a really good shot.)

 

[thebenior]

I would use tongs for feeding insects to adult dragons. My dragon bit my finger when feeding him fruit when he was less than a year old, which didn't hurt.

He bit my finger while a year and a half old while I fed him a cricket; I guess he tasted cricket, so he kept biting. He opened up the bottom of my finger, resulting in bleeding lacerations and tooth bruises on my finger tip and a bruise underneath the fingernail.

After that, I got feeding tongs.