can I spoil my Dragon by hand feeding ?
My baby bearded, Potato, seems to have a healthy appetite. He's about 3 to 5 months old and will eat 20 to 40 crickets a day depending on the size. I am wondering if I have spoiled him as I will place the crickets in his cage one by one because I like to watch him eat them and I want to keep a count of how many he's eating . I also don't want crickets getting loose and running around my house. Sometimes he'll run after them and sometimes he waits for them to come to him. Sometimes he waits for me to put a cricket in front of him. have i completely spoiled him and has he lost his urge to hunt and forage? Any thoughts?
hello ha ha :lol: that's cute so you haven't spoiled your BD it is actually very bonding to hand feed! i hand feed my BDs all the time and they love it!!!!! sometimes they won't even touch the food in the dish but if i pick it up they'll start eating :lol:
Only problem I see with it is if you have to go out of town for awhile. Unless you have someone willing to hand feed your dragon it might be too spoiled to eat. Minor problem though...
I'll admit I've been there too. in addition to making it tricky if your out of town foraging/hunting are both mentally and physically stimulating for them, it's easy for them to get lazy if they know they don't have to work for dinner. Probably best to make sure you do a little of both - hand feed some so you can bond and make him hunt as well so he doesn't get too lazy.
What Rankins and Tater said! Only issue is if you ever need someone else to take care of it. I do the same thing though and mix hand feeding with hunting on their own. They love the stimulation and exercise from hunting, but we still get to bond with hand treats!
Others may discourage it, but that's for more naturalistic rearing imo! If you're not slating your beardies for release into the wild, which none of us are, then to hell with keeping their natural hunting instincts! Let 'em get fat n lazy and have a happy spoiled life lording over us all.
I agree to an extent obesity seems to be very common in pet dragons and even normalized to a concerning degree. For my guy I draw the line at giving him hugs he isn't willing to at least move a step or two for. If I can get him to think about it or work a bit harder all the better. An unchallenging life isn't necessarily the healthiest.