Beardie won’t eat greens with calcium

My beardie is almost a year old, and is healthy except that I can’t get him to eat greens when they have supplements dusted on them. Which makes it hard for me to feed them to him since now that he’s older he doesn’t eat bugs as often.

A few questions:
1: I feed him BSFL/nutrigrubs and have seen several places that since these are calcium rich, you don’t have to dust the feeders with calcium. Is this true?

2. Even if that’s the case, I don’t want him to be calcium or vitamin deficient. So it’s important he eats his greens when supplemented. How often should he be eating calcium supplement per week? Vitamins? My understand is a few times a week.

3. How much am I supposed to be mixing on to the greens per administration?

4. Lastly, I noticed in cleaning up a poop that he had what appeared to be a fully formed BSFL in his poop. Is that normal? He is still active during middle of day, but likes to hang on his hammock on the cool side later part of afternoon/evening.


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The greens don't need to be supplemented. Offer as much variety as you can, rotating what you offer based on what is fresh at a given time. Usually 2-3 veges at a time is good. Stick with dark leafy greens like collards, turnip greens, dandelion greens, etc which are calcium rich on their own. Add some squash or some bell pepper for hydration and vitamins and you should be in good shape. This is a good list to reference for ideas http://www.beautifuldragons.com/Nutrition.html

As far as BSFL go, they are calcium rich on their own as you said, so they don't need to be supplemented. If you offer other bugs, I would add a light coat of calcium or multivitamin powder to those. If he is eating his veges though, he should be able to get quite a lot of his nutrients from that.

When they eat BSFL they tend to swallow them whole if they are eating quickly and they pass through undigested. It's not harmful, but kind of wastes the worm. I've found it best to offer them one at a time to slow their eating a bit and get them to chew before swallowing.


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CooperDragon":1lr3x0od said:

The greens don't need to be supplemented. Offer as much variety as you can, rotating what you offer based on what is fresh at a given time. Usually 2-3 veges at a time is good. Stick with dark leafy greens like collards, turnip greens, dandelion greens, etc which are calcium rich on their own. Add some squash or some bell pepper for hydration and vitamins and you should be in good shape. This is a good list to reference for ideas http://www.beautifuldragons.com/Nutrition.html

As far as BSFL go, they are calcium rich on their own as you said, so they don't need to be supplemented. If you offer other bugs, I would add a light coat of calcium or multivitamin powder to those. If he is eating his veges though, he should be able to get quite a lot of his nutrients from that.

When they eat BSFL they tend to swallow them whole if they are eating quickly and they pass through undigested. It's not harmful, but kind of wastes the worm. I've found it best to offer them one at a time to slow their eating a bit and get them to chew before swallowing.


Moved by moderator from Health to Feeding.

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Thank you so much! I was worried about MBD from not supplementing but this is great. I usually feed him chard, kale, and squash, I’ll start adding in collards and dandelion greens and chard again, too.