beardedstone":3kd6zy8b said:
Thank you! Should I be concerned if my baby beardie isn't eating as much as I'm reading he should? One day he eats about 20 or so - the next couple days he eats like 5. I offer veggies everyday but not sure if he eats while we are at work or school. I'm reading babies should eat 40-50 crickets or worms a day...definitely not eating that much
A common mistake , talking about the number of crickets eaten by a little hatching without knowing the size of the hatchling, and the size of the crickets. Usually these reports of hatchling eating 50 or even 100 crickets per day are a situation where the hatchling is being fed very small crickets which are called generically pinheads or crickets smaller than 4mm long (10 days old), or very small silkworms (under a week old) or very small maggots (blowfly gents) or very small BSF maggots , or very small roaches.
See here for sizes óf insects (crickets , gents)
https://frogs.org.au/live-foods/product-category/insects/
I found my Peppa and Toothless liked they greens and veg so much they were filling up on these and then come lunch and diner feeds of insects , they were not interested in the bugs because they were already full.
So I simply rearranged my feeding schedule so they had at least two feeds of live insects Peppa was 13.5g and Toothless was 11.1g at 5 weeks old.
I was giving the larger meal of small crickets (25 day old) for brekky, and smaller meal of crickets at about lunch, and also blowfly gents , and small (1.5 inch long silkworms)) for their 3 insect meals, the last being 8 small silkworms left on a mulberry leaf in the salad bowl with their greens and grated veg and 6 small crickets for brekky, 4 for lunch. THIS WAS EACH.
At 3 months old they were guzzling down up to 20 medium (1/3 sized) crickets and up to 8 medium (2inch long) silkworms per day each split over 2 cricket meals , the silkworms were their last insect meal each day. THIS WAS EACH.
At 3 months old Peppa was 61g and Toothless 51g.
I essentially fed them as many insects as they wanted at each meal, no restrictions, a few at a time in their rearing tubs, and when they lost interest , I stopped.