Best/least costly way to feed baby dragons?

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BeardieT

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Hey y’all, we just recently got into breeding and have 13, 5 week old babies currently. My question is, what is the best way to go about feeding them a cost effective way? The 13 we have go through about 250 crickets plus greens a day and it costs about $20 a day. We’ve started a Dubia colony but we aren’t gonna feed them those until the colony grows a bit in size. Regardless, how do big breeders feed their babies and make profit?
 

kingofnobbys

BD.org Sicko
Unless you are breeding your own feeder insects ie

silkworms
bsfl
crickets
roaches

you will have no option but to buy in live feeders in bulk by mailorder , likely on a weekly basis.

Go for crickets or roaches no larger than the distance between the hatchlings' eyes and note how many are being eaten each or as group per day , multiply this by 10 , this will compensate for looses entransit to you and allow for increasing appetites.
 

Claudiusx

BD.org Sicko
Staff member
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OP already knows how much he needs a day
BeardieT":2570punx said:
The 13 we have go through about 250 crickets plus greens a day and it costs about $20 a day.

Breeding dragons isnt very profitable. Not unless you are breeding high end morphs that you can look at selling for a couple hundred + each.
It's a fun thing to do, but it's part of the reason many breeders dont last. It's hard to be profitable.

Even if you had bug colonies that were large enough to sustain a large scale breeding practice, youd probably make more money selling the insects than you would feeding them to your dragons and selling the dragons.

Not to discourage you, but if you look at the numbers that's simply how it goes.

To answer your question on how breeders do it, most have wholesale accounts with insect farms. Crickets and mealworms are staples for most breeders as they are the cheapest. I know kidsanddragons gets around 15k crickets per week.
I dont know any who actively feed dubias. Some might occasionally just to say they do, but dubias are too expensive, and like mentioned, if they had a colony there would be more profit in selling the dubia as opposed to feeding them.

Oh, and bulk bsfl get used occasionally. But you really need to buy bulk quantities of everything to keep your cost low.

-Brandon
 

kingofnobbys

BD.org Sicko
Different economics here in Australia.

All the breeders I know ( who breed skinks, dragons , geckos, and small insectivorous monitors all have in house breeding colonies of
>> crickets
>> woodies (roaches)
>> blowflies
>> blacksoldier flies
>> and silkworms
and some also do garden snails.

Only those who have less than 3 or 4 breeding pairs of lizards buy their insects in by mailorder in bulk , usually by the 1000 .

With bearded dragons , even if you can get $80 per hatchling , you are very unlikely to make a profit unless you are breeding all your own feeder insects.
Setting up to breed lizards ( like bearded dragons ) is expensive as you need a humidity & temperature incubator (perhaps more than one) , rearing rubs with UVB sources and basking globes, tanks to hold your breeding adults .

Breeding dragons is not something I'd recommend a NOOB even contemplate as the hatchlings require frequent feeding each day once they hatch and there is a huge amount of competition selling the hatchlings and you wont get much from petshops per hatchling if you choose to simply offload via a petshop.
Producing hard to find / rare morphs is a long and involved process ( of genetic selection ) and beyond a NOOB.

if you are hoping to make money from breeding bearded dragons , is very likely you are in for a disappointment because of the overheads and running costs involved.
 
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