advice on feeding live and commercial diet together

[Agmarshall85]

My name is Amanda, The last time that I posted was to the Beardie ER about my sons Beardie, sadly the same night I was posting he passed away. After some debate, we decided to get another Beardie. This time we went with a breeder and my son was very fond of a male that had a tail nip and a few toe nips. He is a sweet soul and is kindhearted to people and animals that are not "perfect".....anywho....he is 12" but missing only the very tip, I would have to say maybe missing 1/2 inch at most, he is a hypo-leatherback, I will figure out how to post a picture soon he arrived yesterday at about 10am, by about 2pm he ate 10 crickets, slept well, and today has eaten 15, both feedings were dusted with Repti-cal, as will be his feeding tomorrow. I don't know exactly how old he is, or how much he weighs(where can I get him weighed? or what kind of scale can I get?), but he is healthy looking! So I am unsure about how many live feedings he should have, and how many of them should be dusted with calcium, how many with multivitamin. Also, the breeder said that he does not feed the dragons greens at all, he feeds the greens to the crickets and the crickets to his dragons. But I am not sure how to tell if the crickets are eating the greens, this is why I was asking about the commercial diet in conjunction with the crickets. I am going to try to get him to start eating greens, but until he will eat them, I am not really sure how to get him the proper nutrients that he would get from them. Anyone have any advice on this???

 

[CooperDragon]

For the scale, a digital kitchen scale will do the trick. Just set it to grams and put him on the tray. As he gets bigger or if he wiggles too much you can put him in a shoe box and put that on the scale, tare it, then take the weight. It's good to monitor to make sure it's going up or staying steady.

As for the food, I'd always offer a fresh salad even if he doesn't eat it until he's older. Offer as much variety as possible to try and draw interest. With crickets, you can gut load them with veggies but you'll want to swap them out often so they don't start to stink. If you have a lot of crickets (it's cheaper to buy them in bulk online) they'll do a lot of damage to the vegetables and completely core out potatoes so it's pretty easy to tell they're eating. You'll want to keep the crickets well hydrated too by using a moist sponge or some water crystals.

I'd feed crickets every day for a young dragon. Dust the crickets in small batches using a small cup like this http://www.glad.com/food-storage/containers/mini-round/ and offer a new batch for as long as he wants to eat within a 10(ish) minute window. You could also use phoenix (or other small, soft) worms as a treat.

 

[Agmarshall85]

Thank you for the info on the scale!! I am offering him greens and fruits daily, but no interest as of yet...as for the crickets, we buy them about 500 at a time but I wasn't sure what they would do with the leaves of collard greens or mustard greens so I chopped them up with a food processor, should I just put the leaves in there whole then? I gave them the gut loader and the water crystals as well, we have had very little dead loss, but because I chopped up the veggies so much, I couldn't tell if they were eating them....I am guessing that he is about 5-6 months due to his size, so would that me considered juvenile still?

 

[Agmarshall85]

This is Tank!!!

 

[CooperDragon]

He does look a bit bigger than I imagined. 6 months may be a good guess. You can chop up the veggies too but I don't think it's necessary. I just sliced them up or put in leaves and the crickets went to town. They're pretty aggressive and will find a way to eat about anything.

 

[Agmarshall85]

Ok great!!! Thank you!!! will they eat both the gut loader and the greens??

 

[CooperDragon]

What kind of gut loader are you using?

 

[Agmarshall85]

Fluker's High Calcium Cricket Diet

 

[CooperDragon]

Yep that should be fine as their staple food. I'd consider the veggies to be the real gut load.

 

[Agmarshall85]

Thank you so much for all of your advice!!!!

 

[jarich]

Probably the easiest thing to do is to give the fresh veg daily to your dragon, and then when you replace it, put the old stuff in with the crickets. That way you arent wasting the veg at all and you are giving them a healthy gut load. I usually chop it up with a little water to rehydrate it after being in the dragon enclosure for the day.

 

[Agmarshall85]

That's a fantastic idea, thank you!!!