I've been feeding my Beardie smallish black crickets since I brought him home about 6 days ago and I'm beginning to notice that he's more interested in other bugs. I dropped some crickets in earlier and a black fuzzy worm thing fell in as well. Oz immediately gobbled this thing up but then proceeded to ignore his crickets. He does eat the crickets although he's got a weird routine going, I've tried getting him into a routine where he eats around 11-12 in the morning, again at 2-3pm and then again at 6-7pm. As many as he'll take in the ten minute time frame.
Lately though Oz will just sit there for the first two feedings and if the crickets come to him he eats them, but at the last feeding he'll eat almost 20 crickets in one go.
So I went to my pet store to see if they had any kind of other live foods to try him on during his earlier feedings. They have these 'small hoppers' they're kind of yellow/green and black things with huge back legs. Kind of like what i'd expect a locust to look like.
Would you guys recommend trying them out for his earlier feedings to see if maybe a bit of diversity will perk up his appetite during the day.
I know they can eat anywhere from 20-100 crickets a day, but at first Oz would eat greedily at every feeding. After a day or two though he began to slow down and now he just eats a bit each time and then a lot around 6pm.
I'm thinking he might have just been really hungry the first two days because the pet store was only feeding him 2-3 crickets every second day or so. Could that be it?
I feed my beardie hoppers (another name for small locusts without wings i think) now and again and she loves them, i'd reccomend trying them and they are supposed to be a good source of nutrition. The only risk with hoppers is that they my like them so much that they go off crickets. Mine has always been a picky eater. when she was 4 months she was the similar to yours: she would go some days without eating much and others eating loads. She has grown 7 inches in the 4 months i've got her and put on a lot of weight, even though she never ate anywhere near 100 crickets per day, prob 30-40 at the most (on good days).