Eating habits of baby beardie

Kiakekate":61l027l4 said:

Hi, I'm really new to the lizard scene as I just got my beardie about a week or two ago. She seems to be doing well, she's active and doesn't show any physical signs of ailment. I was wondering if her eating habits are normal. I've read babies will eat around 30 crickets in a day, but she will usually only eat a few. She'll usually eat a few crickets, a tiny bit of veggie, and a little bit of the baby bites I got her. I feel like she isn't eating enough. She doesn't eat as much as everyone online says they should but she also seems to be doing okay. She's in her tank (highest point about 100/105 and cool end is about 80) and still runs around, her poops have been solid but today she had one that was more wet. Any advice to make her eat more or to double check on her health?

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kingofnobbys":3ad72rwz said:

Kiakekate":3ad72rwz said:

Hi, I'm really new to the lizard scene as I just got my beardie about a week or two ago. She seems to be doing well, she's active and doesn't show any physical signs of ailment. I was wondering if her eating habits are normal. I've read babies will eat around 30 crickets in a day, but she will usually only eat a few. She'll usually eat a few crickets, a tiny bit of veggie, and a little bit of the baby bites I got her. I feel like she isn't eating enough. She doesn't eat as much as everyone online says they should but she also seems to be doing okay. She's in her tank (highest point about 100/105 and cool end is about 80) and still runs around, her poops have been solid but today she had one that was more wet. Any advice to make her eat more or to double check on her health?

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The number of crickets eaten by a hatchling is a function of the size of the feeder insects, some give ultra small (pinhead) size crickets to their hatchlings , and the hatchling has to eat LOTS of them to full his stomach. So be cautious about claims of very large numbers of insects per sitting and ask "what size insects ?" .
Others use larger sized crickets ( maybe 20 day old or 1/4 size or even 1/3 size crickets if the hatchling is large enough (maybe about 11g to 14g) , and consequently fewer crickets are eaten per meal for each of it's three live insect meals per day.

My approach is to give my hatchlings their crickets 2 or 3 at a time , and continue until the hatchling no longer shows any interest in the insects, at which time I stop offering the insects.

The fact that your new hatchling is already eating is a good sign.

We often find out that the Noob beardie keeper has been convinced to buy stuff by the shop's staff , and they more often than not are given very bad advise by these no nothing pet shop staff. So you can be sure you new baby has the best possible chance of growing big and heavy and happy it is a good idea for you to work methodically through my cheatsheet, problems will very likely pop right at you. Here's my cheatsheet viewtopic.php?f=6&t=234738&p=1806050#p1806050
, please review your lighting and UV and setup based on the guidelines given in the cheatsheet.

How are you measuring the temperatures ?

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EllenD":3rpha1um said:

Oh please stop feeding her the larger crickets or any other insects that are too large right now, and go buy ones smaller than the space between her eyes now. I'm sorry if you have a bunch of the large crickets left, but you just cannot continue to feed them to her, as it's not just a matter of her having trouble chewing them or hunting them down, but they can actually kill her by causing a massive impaction or actually choking her or causing an aspiration into her lungs. It's extremely dangerous to feed a hatchling or young baby insects that are too large, we see people on her all the time posting that their new baby they just got was fine, then all of a sudden they vomited, threw a black beard, became lethargic, and then died. So please discontinue feeding any crickets from the previous batches of that size that you have remaining.

I'm assuming that if you've only had her a week or so that she's pretty small, pet shops are unfortunately selling them younger and smaller, too young and too small, to the point it's dangerous. So you'll most likely need to buy her either pinhead crickets, or the next size up, and you'll then start seeing her eat much larger quantities of bugs, which is where those numbers you're seeing come from. But when in doubt it's always better to feed them too small than too large. If you see a cricket that you're not sure is too big for her, never feed it to her and go smaller. When I read your comment that you would "buy her smaller crickets next time" I wanted to make sure that you understand it's not simply a matter of them being too large as far as hunting or catching/chewing them, and that you knew that it's not alright to just feed the rest of the large ones you have left to her and then buy smaller ones. This is a very common mistake people make, usually because the pet shop they buy their beardies from are feeding them bugs that are both way too big and also inappropriate for them to eat in the first place, like mealworms.

Just yesterday I went to my local Petco and saw the tank of baby beardies that they just received that are so tiny and young that the animal manager puts them in a tank that says "Just Arrived, Not Yet For Sale", because the vendor ships them at 4" long...So you can imagine how tiny these poor guys are...And in their bowl: LARGE MEALWORMS! These mealworms were the length of medium sized superworms and as big around, almost wider than the beardies themselves...UHG...

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