Growth spurt? Eating question...please help!

[Spartan06]

So for the last week or two our beardie has been eating between 40 and 50 crickets twice a day. This is up from his normal 20-30 but we just chalked it up to him getting bigger. He has also been a chow hound when it comes to his veggies. Now, the past two days he's barely touching his crickets (maybe eating 5-10 at a time) and he's eating probably half of his greens that I would normally see him eat. Just yesterday we did switch to the bigger crickets so I would expect him to eat fewer of them, but the first day of doing this it was still the smaller crickets. He also just had a shed at the beginning of this week. When we take him out of his viv he's still active although he seems slightly less active in his viv, I see him mainly just sitting in his hammock where often throughout the day I would see him normally see him moving back and forth from his hammock, to his rock, to his tree limb.

This morning hubby fed him and he said he ate, but I just went to pick up his rock because I was going to clean his rug and there were at least 10 crickets under his rock. I don't know how many hubby dumped in this morning so I have no clue how many he may have eaten. Again, these are the larger crickets so if hubby dropped 20 in then that means he did eat 10 of them, which I'm guessing would be about normal for his size/age, but I'm a little worried about this drop in eating. I was trying to clean the rug so I had taken him out of his viv and when I put him back instead of putting him in his hammock I put him down on his rug area and he did eat, although, I'd have to lift the rock up again to see how many he may have eaten and how many may have escaped. I also know I ended up sucking a couple up with the vacuum because they did not like the rock being moved around and kept running out of the rock. I know we're not supposed to leave crickets in his viv and normally we don't, when I feed him I usually do 10-15 the first dump, then I'll add more if he still seems hungry. Again, he did eat, but, he seemed to want to wait for the crickets to come to him instead of him chasing after the crickets.

He doesn't seem to be loosing any weight, that I can see, although I am going to put him on a small food scale that we have so I can keep an eye on it. His poop looks/seems normal. Could he just have been going through a growth spurt and that is the explanation for the huge increase in crickets and now the drop off in crickets? Other than being a little extra clingy when he's being handled and maybe a little slower in his viv he doesn't seem to be acting any different. My son did have a friend over two days ago who wanted to hold him and I did have to take him away from the friend because he was being, in my opinion, a little careless with the way he was handling him so I've chalked the clingyness up to that. He was holding him, just not as securely as we would hold him and he was one of those kids that *knew* how to do it and didn't want to be instructed so I took him away. Spartan will get down and run like normal but when he's in our hands or on our shoulders he just seems to be digging his nails in a little tighter, I'm guessing so that he feels secure?

We did get him at PetSmart and we have noooo idea how old he was when we got him. I found another site that had measurements of beardies from baby to adult and based on those I'm taking an uneducated guess that he was around 4 weeks old when we got him, which would make him about a week shy of being 4 months old now. I keep forgetting to measure him but I'm guessing him at between 9 and 10 inches right now. I've done a little reading on brumation (hopefully I've got that right) but I thought that (a) he was a little young for that and (b) that usually happened around August/September, but maybe I'm remembering wrong. I'm going to go back and do some more reading about that but I really am thinking that's not what this is.

Any thoughts, insight, suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!!!

 

[BeardieMommy85]

Something very similar has happened to my Beardie and I have been told it is normal. Ever since he got around 8 months his appetite increased DOUBLE and he was eating a TON! Since he got bigger, I switched him to the medium/large sized crickets and since there is such a big size difference between the small and the medium/large he doesn't eat nearly as much. I was also very worried because he goes sometimes 2 days without eating anything and he won't even look at his crickets so I took him to the vet thinking something was wrong but she told me as they grow into adulthood they don't NEED to eat every single day and it is normal for them to go a few days without eating and then a few days eating and it shouldn't be a concern unless it gets to around 5 days or more. Hope you feel better knowing this info!

 

[Spartan06]

So even if he's still what I would consider a baby, maybe 4 months old, this would be normal? I can say we've had times where he eats more than others, but never where he's gone up to eating so many crickets and then dropping down to so few, but since he is still eating I guess that's a good sign.

 

[Spartan06]

On a positive note, when I fed him today he ate 12-15 large crickets, which to me would be the equivalent of 24-30 smalls, so Yay for healthy eating today!!!! He's also had a chance to bask in the real sun the last two days as our temps have reached well into the 90's without high humidity!!! I did make sure half of his viv was in the shade and I brought him back inside as soon as I saw him move to the *cool* side of the viv. He was one happy lizard out there though, stretching himself toward the sun and turning his head to look at us if we moved him out of it ~ LOL. DD spent about five minutes out there holding him and she would stand in the sun for a while, get hot and move to the shade where he would almost give her a dirty look! :lol: