Banjo the beardie

I adopted Banjo a few weeks ago, he appeared to be trying to recover from stress, but kept stressing so I figured I could give him a better life.

So far, he is doing amazing! I love his quirks and adventurousness! He always pushes his paper towel aside to poop right on th glass ( every single time!). Of course he does the dragonly 'has to lick everything I run up to' thing but also licks my hand when I reach in to pet/pick him up. He's caught onto grabbing onto my arm when he comes out of the tank 8) , come out for sometimes hours on end and then it takes the forces of the gods to get him back into his tank lol, I think he just really enjoys being out with me. I can't wait till summer to take him outside for playtime! Banjo can be quite clumsy sometimes, miscalculating the jumps distance for his leaps of faith. He can also be found running full blast and lunging at white walls sometimes :lol: so I've put up some towel/blanket barriers because his nose is still healing from previous glass rubbing in a small terrarium.

His favourite foods are hornworms ( he will jump 10+ inches to get to them before I can get them in his bowl) blueberries, grandmas garnden fresh kale and strawberries. Still trying new foods. He doesn't care much for apples or carrots, and will usually eat around them on his dish, the little bugger. He's on a regular staple of super worms and salad daily. Tomorrow we try boiled lentils! I don't think he will be thrilled about them, but if I mix them with blueberries I think I can trick him to try some. There's always the trusted baby spoon that I have that is his favourite, I can get him to gobble up everything I serve on in!

Here's Banjo during run around time. He decided that he would do about 10 laps around the room stopping at his basking spot to warm up each lap for about 30seconds and would take off on another lap. He's so funny sometimes and I think he is a happy beardie!

 

[Carmalitaaa]

Ooooo I'm also going to try to find alfalfa (not sprouts) to try with him.

 

[Carmalitaaa]

I've now looked everywhere from the regular grocery stores, to produce stores and specialty Asian produce store and still cannot fined collard greens, mustard greens or turnip greens. This is driving me nuts. I also can't find alfalfa plant (not sprouts) so I may need to check my local plant nursery for seeds so I can grow my own for him during the summer. So now today he gets to try not only bell peppers, but green beans and papaya too. Picked up some hornworms, tiny little things, I picked up a tomatoes to try to fatten them up because I do believe they are tomatoe hornworms. Roommate upstairs has some yam that I might gut load them with as well as give some to banjo. Picked up a few more fake plants for his tank, hopefully he enjoys them

 

[kyleena29]

Hi there, so glad you're enjoying your little one. I just wanted to point out a few things. Be careful about trying to feed hornworms other foods. There is food especially made for them, usually where you purchase the worms you can get more but I found this information about feeding hornworms plants:
Q.  I want to take them out and feed them plants, what do they eat?
A.  Although in the wild they eat plants in the Nightshade family, these plants contain toxic alkaloids that will build up in the worms and may harm your animals.  For the same reason, you should only feed your pets cultivated hornworms, and not pick them from your garden.

Nightshade family includes tomato plants which they would normally eat so make sure you aren't getting them wild caught.

I don't know how big your little guy is but phoenix worms are great for him he will need a lot if he is bigger as the worms don't get very big.

 

[Carmalitaaa]

Thanks for the info, I will switch out the tomatoe and give them yam instead. Safe for them and beardie. i feared that I may need to get more of the pheonix worms, but compared to the amount of crickets I think it'll be better. My local rep store does bulk orders so that's cool. I also found out that they do dragon sitting for 8$ a day which isn't too bad if I have to go out of town.

Here's some pictures of more stuff I added to his terrarium, as well as a picture of him looking pretty stoked about today's salad!

 

[SHBailey]

I have to say that looks like a really nice colorful salad you put together for him in spite of all the trouble you're having finding fresh greens for him.

We have similar problems here in Anchorage Alaska -- most of our fresh produce gets shipped in through the port, and by the time it gets to the grocery stores, sometimes it's not in very good shape, so although we can usually find collard greens, I usually end up having to salvage what's edible by wading through a bunch of stuff that's only suitable for compost. My husband is actually not as picky as our bearded dragon in terms of what he'll eat, and sometimes I've been known to take veggies away from him because (IMO) they're not fit for human (or dragon) consumption

There are a few local diehard farmers who are trying to figure out ways to grow fresh veggies in this climate, but it's not easy to get their products on a regular basis, and even when they are available, they're not cheap. I guess that's just one of the prices we pay for living this far north :roll:

 

[Carmalitaaa]

You should try growing kale! My grandmas has lasted through the winter and I just pick off a leaf or two every week, super fresh and organic. I've even gone out and picked some when there was a foot and a half of snow! Apparently it'll flower during spring time, so it's a crop that could last a while. It's nice knowing I can at least get one of the super foods most of the year, hesitant on buying cabbage at the store yesterday but might see if grandma has some more veggies for him. My grandma loves seeing updates on my little guy and always comments on my Facebook photos of him, so cute.

I also scored at the dollar store yesterday and found a furimals fuzzy microwaveable heat bag for animals for 4$! Online has decent reviews, sells on amazon for 17$ and thought it would be great for any car trips we have to take when it's chilly. Yet to try it out but I will make sure it doesn't get too hot, but just warm enough to keep him cozy. Might be a nice thing for snuggle time too. Might sew on a different fabric on top of the fuzzy that is a little more low fibre, I don't want any fuzz getting caught around his toes

 

[Carmalitaaa]

Oh I also gave him this chunk of quarts which he actually went and checked out!

 

[SHBailey]

Interestingly enough, I tried gardening for a few summers but eventually gave up on it. I only have a green thumb if I keep it indoors -- little plants in little pots. As soon as I take it out in the backyard with the tilling and other hard physical labor that I don't have the stamina to do, and the weeds and the bugs that I don't have the heart to kill, it goes away. But I did try kale once, long before we got the bearded dragon. The little plants didn't get very big, but we managed to harvest a little before the frost killed them, or so I thought. The next spring I was planning to take them out and plant something else, but by the time I got around to it they were flowering, and then the stems behind the flowers swelled up and turned into seed pods, and I gave away a bunch of seeds that year. But the ones I planted in my yard for the next season didn't do very well the following year. Go figure :? .

Years ago I used to live in a weird place called Southern California where it never snowed, and I had a grandma who grew all kinds of fruit and veggies in her garden. We used to call it the "Grandma Grocery Store". If I'd had a bearded dragon back then, it would have been really easy to get salad ingredients for him.

On the rare occasions when we have to travel with our reptiles (mainly trips to the vet, especially if we have to go in the winter), I use a cooler with tiny little holes drilled in the lid for air, and I put in a hot water bottle filled with warm tap water and wrapped up in a towel, so it becomes a "warmer", and it's good for several hours before I have to find some more warm water to replace what has cooled off. I've never tried the microwavable heat bags, but lots of people seem to recommend keeping hand warmers around for your reptiles in case the power goes out. My father in law once asked us what we would do about our reptiles if we had a power failure, and I just told him that I didn't think we'd have a problem because we have two reptiles and two mammals, so one of us would just cuddle the bearded dragon and the other one would cuddle the snake until the power comes back on...

BTW, in case you haven't heard, maybe I should mention that kale and spinach are not considered the best staples for bearded dragons. It's my understanding that although they are rich in many vitamins and minerals, they also contain oxalates, which can interfere with calcium absorption.

It looks like Banjo likes his new rock

 

[Carmalitaaa]

Yeah he only gets kale maybe once or twice a week, I did manage to get some cabbage leaves from granny's also she gave me a few grapes to give him and an apple. Tonight's salad will probably be cabbage, green beans, apple, grape and bell peppers again. I like that I have a good variety of fruits and veggies now for him, he can get something different everyday.
I did take out the tomatoe from my hornworms and replaced it with some green beans, will probably wait another day or two before I feed them to him.
My grandma gave me some tips and tricks on growing turnip greens and collard greens and also told me I should have no problems growing alfalfa.

And after three awesome poops on top of the paper towel, he goes back to his old ways and pooped underneath them again.... that's my banjo.
I should also note that when I first brought him home he was pooping maybe every 3 days and on the super worms he seems to poop everyday, so that's good right? Means he's eating healthier if I recall?

 

[Carmalitaaa]

He did NOT like the cabbage :lol: he ate one piece and just looked at me in disgust as I tried to offer him more hahaha. Oh well, I'm glad I didn't buy a whole cabbage and just grabbed some leaves off grandma. The snow has melted outside, so I might check the back garden for dandelion leaves. Luckily for banjo, we keep some dandelions on the lawn because they are good early bloom flowers for them :wink: gotta save them bees

 

[SHBailey]

How often they poop varies widely from one beardie to the next, and in the same beardie at different times, too. When we first got our beardie he was about a year old and he pooped just about every day, but as he got older the interval lengthened out to sometimes as much as two weeks. But superworms can actually sometimes make them constipated if they eat too many.

They do have a way of deciding for themselves where they want to poop, regardless of what their human slaves would like

Back in the day when our beardie would voluntarily eat any veggies at all, he didn't like cabbage either. The experts will tell you to mix up your beardie's salad so they won't be able to pick out their favorites and they will get variety. Yeah, right I'd find pieces of cabbage only (or whatever else I had in the mix that he didn't like) scattered all around the salad dish, like he'd go take a bite and then spit it out if it was something he didn't like. So much for variety -- I think most of them are perfectly capable of picking out their favorites, thank you :roll:

We are buried under about 2 feet of snow here in Anchorage Alaska, and it will be several months before we have dandelion greens for the beardie again, usually after breakup in May. Then we will have a whole yard full of them until fall. My husband has even developed a system for handling the dandelion crop -- he selects an area where there are lots of nice ones and then mows the lawn all around it, then selects a different patch to save the next time he mows, so that we always have some nice fresh young dandelion greens somewhere in the yard -- the bearded dragon gets the little ones and my husband eats the big ones. And on nice summer days when he can't stand being indoors, I give him a big plastic bag and a little plastic bag and send him out in the yard to pick dandelions for himself and the beardie

 

[Carmalitaaa]

Well, I got him to eat some cabbage by smearing papaya all over it :wink: did the trick. I may get him a leaf here and there and try in the future but for now I thought I would give it a second go to prevent waste. Still went for the green beans first.
Ive always mixed up his salad, but as you were saying, my guy too eats around it to get his favorites. :lol:

I'll have to try to get my roommates to save me a square of dandelions like that haha

 

[SHBailey]

A little "salad dressing" can work wonders to make it more tasty :mrgreen:

 

[Carmalitaaa]

Well I had a friend hunt down some collard greens.... a good hour from my house but I'm going to make he trip, and try to see if there are good ways of keeping them longer so I can buy in more of a bulk rather than a few day supply as I normally do

 

[SHBailey]

Collard greens tend to be pretty sturdy, and if they're in good shape to begin with, sometimes you can keep them fairly fresh for up to a week or a little longer. If they get wilted but they're still green, you can make a fresh cut at the end of the stem and put them in a glass of water, and they will perk back up again in a couple of hours, and you can keep them that way for several days, but once they start turning yellow or brown there's not much more you can do.

You can also do this with turnip greens and mustard greens as well, or any kind of greens that have a good stem down the middle of the leaf and a good system of veins, as long as they're just wilted and not too badly bruised or damaged.

I have not experimented with trying to freeze them or anything like that. I've heard that they lose some of their vitamins that way, as well as probably just not being as appealing as fresh stuff. We haven't really solved the problem of needing to keep fresh greens around either, other than planning to run to the grocery store every few days or at least once a week or so. Not so easy with 2 feet of snow on the ground, but so far we've been able to just barely manage :roll: