Adult Bearded Dragon Not Eating Greens

My girlfriend and I purchased a 4 year old dragon from someone selling him about 1 1/2 months ago. The previous owner says that he loves greens and especially Endive. All we can get him to eat is meal worms and freeze dried grasshoppers.

We have tried all types of greens and vegetables and fruits. We have tried the soft pellet like food that you can get at Petsmart. Someone at Petco said to try baby food greens and vegetables. We tried putting greens in the food bowl with the worms moving around to hopefully fool him. He'll get a green in his mouth and shake it out. We tried letting him go a few days without eating to get him to maybe eat the greens and he just didn't eat.

At this point we are lost on what to do. He only wants insects.

Any ideas on how to get him to eat greens and vegetables?

It sounds like he might be stubborn. It can take time to get them adjusted to a good diet sometimes. How is his weight? I suggest keeping track of his weight to ensure it remains relatively stable. You can withhold bugs and offer daily salads to try and get him into them. This is a good list to reference for some salad ideas http://www.beautifuldragons.com/Nutrition.html Sometimes offering the veges by hand helps because you can create some movement.

As far as bugs go, I would avoid the dried foods and packaged bugs. It's better to offer live bugs because you can feed them veges to help gutload them and they will provide needed hydration. Roaches, crickets, silk worms, hornworms, and black soldier fly larvae are good options to have on hand. An adult dragon like you have should be on a primarily veg diet though (around 80% overall) so bug meals are only needed once every few days, especially once you get him going on a nice variety of veges.

That is the list we went off of to make him a salad. We also did withhold insects and offered him his greens and it didn't work. I didn't need to use a scale to see his weight drop. It was visually possible to see it.

I think this goes beyond stubbornness and is possibly a matter of all he ever ate was insects.

We can try to withhold the insects again, but am fearful that it's not going to work as it did not last time.

We went with the freeze dried grasshoppers because he will not eat crickets and my girlfriend is not willing to pull the legs off of them. So since the crickets weren't going to happen, she is comfortable feeding the freeze dried grasshoppers with tongs. I am not always at our apartment to feed him as I stay at my parent's house up to 5 nights every other week.

She has also said no to any roaches. Living in Florida I can understand why, even if the roach is a different kind then what is here. Just the name roach brings bad thoughts to her.

If withholding insects doesn't work, what else can we do?

If his weight is dropping, he may have an underlying health issue. It might be a good idea to bring him into a vet for a visit if you have an experienced reptile vet in the area. I'd bring a fresh poop sample to have it checked for parasites and request a general exam to see if anything stands out as a health problem.

CooperDragon":1pkych7q said:

If his weight is dropping, he may have an underlying health issue. It might be a good idea to bring him into a vet for a visit if you have an experienced reptile vet in the area. I'd bring a fresh poop sample to have it checked for parasites and request a general exam to see if anything stands out as a health problem.

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His weight was only dropping because we withheld insects in order to get him to eat greens. It didn't work.

As long as he eats insects each day, he keeps his weight up with no issues.

Have you tried handfeeding some of his bugs to him and being sneeky = slipping a bit a green into the mouth while he's munching on his greens ?

Gutloading the crickets with the good greens is also a very good way to get beardie to eat his greens and not knowing he's eating the yacky green stuff as it's disguised.

kingofnobbys":3pvfitia said:

Have you tried handfeeding some of his bugs to him and being sneeky = slipping a bit a green into the mouth while he's munching on his greens ?

Gutloading the crickets with the good greens is also a very good way to get beardie to eat his greens and not knowing he's eating the yacky green stuff as it's disguised.

Click to expand...

I can try the first part, the second not so much. My beardie doesn't eat crickets. Is afraid of them and my girlfriend is not willing to pull their legs off when I'm not there, which is quite a bit between working long hours as an EMT and when I stay at my mom's.

Thank you though for the ideas.