He won't eat salad!

[ladygodiva35]

My 18 inch beardie is a rescue and was told that his last owner didn't pay any attention to him. He was given to me in a 10 gallon tank and was very anti-social. I've had him for about 2 months now and he is so loving and affectionate now but the problem is he won't eat anything that isn't a moving bug. No pellets...no nothing. It must be a bug!

I tried so many different kinds of fruits and veggies and he will only eat a bite here and there.
I tried mixing super worms in the salad but he only picks them out. I even tried mixing fruity baby food with the salad but he didn't want anything to do with it.

I'm trying to also teach my 11 inch beardie to accept some salad but he is being a punk about it also. What else can I try to do to get these stubborn dragons to eat a nice tasty salad?

 

[icelore]

Stop feeding them bugs till they start eating their salad. Dragons can be stubborn and can go a long time without eating. But they are also little piggies - if they get hungry enough, they will eat it!

Also, if you can hand feed, once they take a big bug and are chewing, if you have a bit of rolled up salad that you can cram in their mouth too, sometimes that works. Or even moving small pieces of salad like a bug will sometimes get them to strike and try it on accident.

 

[Crewdog00]

Stop feeding them bugs till they start eating their salad. Dragons can be stubborn and can go a long time without eating. But they are also little piggies - if they get hungry enough, they will eat it!

Also, if you can hand feed, once they take a big bug and are chewing, if you have a bit of rolled up salad that you can cram in their mouth too, sometimes that works. Or even moving small pieces of salad like a bug will sometimes get them to strike and try it on accident.

Love this advice. My beard also doesn't care for his salad. I did a Kale, romaine lettuce, and pear combo. Bugs ate it and Spike at the bugs but picked around the salad. Haha. YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

 

[icelore]

It's hard for a lot of people to try and "starve out" their dragons, but really, they work so much differently then mammals do. They can go a long time without eating with no ill effects. When they don't realize salad is food, but are getting other food that they like, they have zero incentive to eat their greens.

Tough love for dragons who don't eat their salad! It's harder on us then them, and really important to their heal and well-being in the long run.

My dragon was ok at eating salad when he was little, but when through a phase where he wouldn't touch it. On the advice of some people here I decided to just stop offering bugs. I had to starve him out for almost three weeks before he'd eat his greens! I just bathed him every day to make sure he was hydrated, and every other day or so he'd get like...2 dubia just to whet his appetite. Towards the end he dropped a bit of weight, and finally decided that eating salad was better then being miserable and hungry. Biology always wins out against hard hardheadedness.

No animal is going to starve themselves to death if there is food available, even if they don't like it. It would be like suffocating yourself by trying to hold your breath. lol

 

[Crewdog00]

I starved spike for 14 hrs. No bugs and when I came home late last night he ate a whole romaine lettuce leaf. He isn't a fan if the salad I made him. Kale and romaine plus dusting and commercial food. But I feel better now that I've seen him eat a green.

 

[icelore]

At least getting him to eat some green is a start. It helps him realize that the leafy things are actually a food! Now just get him to eat something nutritious and you'll be set.

Check this nutrition chart for good things to feed. Romaine is a start, but it's not really useful as a food product for beardies.

 

[derk24]

It's hard for a lot of people to try and "starve out" their dragons, but really, they work so much differently then mammals do. They can go a long time without eating with no ill effects. When they don't realize salad is food, but are getting other food that they like, they have zero incentive to eat their greens.

Tough love for dragons who don't eat their salad! It's harder on us then them, and really important to their heal and well-being in the long run.

My dragon was ok at eating salad when he was little, but when through a phase where he wouldn't touch it. On the advice of some people here I decided to just stop offering bugs. I had to starve him out for almost three weeks before he'd eat his greens! I just bathed him every day to make sure he was hydrated, and every other day or so he'd get like...2 dubia just to whet his appetite. Towards the end he dropped a bit of weight, and finally decided that eating salad was better then being miserable and hungry. Biology always wins out against hard hardheadedness.

No animal is going to starve themselves to death if there is food available, even if they don't like it. It would be like suffocating yourself by trying to hold your breath. lol

I am having the same problem with my Beardie, he's a juvenile (4/5 months old) and he barely touches his greens. If I withhold live food from him will it hurt him? Like if he is getting no calcium dust that whole time?

 

[icelore]

I am having the same problem with my Beardie, he's a juvenile (4/5 months old) and he barely touches his greens. If I withhold live food from him will it hurt him? Like if he is getting no calcium dust that whole time?

IMO, withholding live feeders will not hurt him. It obviously depends on the time frame. If you stop feeding him for two months and he looks like a skeleton...that's a problem. I'm not a vet, but the "tough love" was the route suggested to me on this forum over a year ago. I guess it's a personal decision - I personally decided that it was worth it for him not to eat bugs with his calcium and vitamins for a bit as a trade off to get him to eat salad. To me, getting used to and eating greens was more important then worrying about having an adult dragon that I was overloading with protein because I had to feed him bugs every say since he wouldn't eat anything else. He was big and healthy, and even after not eating hardly at all the first week, he had not dropped hardly any weight.

MBD is something that develops over time. Any nutritional deficiency takes time before it impacts the system. If it was a tiny dragon that was growing in leaps and bounds, I personally would wait to try the tough love, cause they are growing and eating like pigs - a week without food for a little guy would be far different then 2 weeks without feed for an adult or sub-adult, you know what I mean? Also, you can give liquid calcium, or try different things like baby food with a bit of calcium mixed in if you're really worried.

Ridley was 6 months I think when I starved him into eating salad. It took him a week before it would try it again (he did eat greens when he was a baby), and that was with me waving it around like a crawling bug, and he was so hungry I guess that it just want for it. lol Every day after that I would find some missing out of his salad. Not much at first, and I never actually saw him eating it, but more and more went missing daily. After eating salad for a week, I started offering him a few bugs daily, at night only. If he was hungry during the day, there were greens. I'm mean like that. I still feed him his bugs at night, just in case he ever changes his mind about the salad! lol

 

[derk24]

Ok. Next week the hunger strike begins. I think he'll be ok, I'm just worried he's never going to want greens and that's a problem.

 

[derk24]

Of course, not more than 10 hours since my last msg, I see him run to his salad dish and eat a little bit.

 

[icelore]

Haha. Well, just because he ate a little, keep on limiting his buggs till you are sure that he's eating *enough* of his salad!

 

[derk24]

I plan on it, I just had to laugh at that lol