How often should you dust crickets?

I've been dusting my beardie's crickets twice a day. Is that too much? How often should you dust crickets?

every cricket gets a very light dusting, everyday.

I hand feed all my pampered and horribly spoilt scaley children (I enjoy the excuse for a quality time, it reinforces the bond, and they enjoy it too) so I tend to get a lot of surplus powder on my hands and shirt.

Essentially enough calcium powder to coat them lightly , not to smother them or cake them in it is sufficient.

It depends on few things....the age + size of the dragon and whether the supplement has D3. Babies + young juveniles should have 1 meal a day dusted lightly, but not the second feeding. It's good to have 2 kinds of calcium powder....one WITH D3 , the other without. Too much D3 can cause kidney problems down the road and be deadly in a few days or weeks from the time a dragon begins to act ill. So if you use a MVB [ mercury vapor bulb ] or if your dragon spends time out in the sun he/she will be getting natural D3 and you don't need to use much, so you can use the powder that contains D3 about 2 feedings per week, the other days you can use the calcium without D3. Adults need calcium only about 3X a week, and only 1-2X with D3 if they get exposed to natural sun and or have a strong MVB that produces a good amount of uvb.

AHBD":3t1jrl2a said:

Babies + young juveniles should have 1 meal a day dusted lightly, but not the second feeding. [...] Adults need calcium only about 3X a week.

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This is common guidelines but it seems like it would result in calcium deficiency over the long term. For babies this how does it not result in low or borderline balance of minerals depending on the difference in meal sizes?

The guideline is not something I read, but something I did as I raised many clutches of babies myself. The exception for babies would be for those that are not eating well or eating very few insects....then you could dust them twice a day. And sickly babies are usually given syringe feeding where extra calcium would be added in. But the average baby/juvie eating 30-60 bugs a day would have plenty of calcium if bugs were dusted for one feeding.

I meant to ad that before I ran out this morning, that this is a general recommendation for average growing healthy dragons. Babies that are calcium deficient are most likely purchased from stores where they are fed very little, not exposed to proper uvb and temps, and not supplemented for the most part.