How many insects should I give?

[NickAVD]

I think many people know that the ratio of insects to greenery for small dragons should be 80 to 20 percent, for adults 20 to 80.
The right proportion can be achieved by limiting the number of insects so that the dragon is more interested in greenery. Violation of proportions and overfeeding with insects can lead to liver problems and excess weight.
Can you share your experience on how you calculate how many insects should be given per feeding?
Usually I try to stop at the moment when Foxy thinks a little before grabbing another bug. And I know that after that he could eat about 1/3 more.

 

[AHBD]

Always a good question to bring up ! Still differences of opinion on it but common sense plays a big part. The 80/20 that reverses to 20/80 at a certain time is old outdated advice, only thing to be said for it is it's somewhere in between. People used to say " feed a baby 20-30 insects 3 x a day which was way over feeding. It also depends on the size and type of insect. It's going to take a LOT of bsfl for a dragon over 12" compared to the amount of dubia for a 12" dragon. Same with crickets, and then superworms can be fed regularly once a dragon is at least on average 12" [ or a few smaller supers can be fed to slightly smaller beardies ] so there are going to be guesses all over the place.

Greens can be fed pretty much all the dragon wants. The thing to be aware of is putting an amount that looks like a tails worth of insects, like 1/4 of the dragon's body weight and just letting them gorge and get get stuffed. A healthy appetite is good but the proportions should still be managed. Many beardies really don;t know when to stop so it's up to us to keep them from gaining too much weight, especially with too fast a growth rate. So those are just some of my ideas for this thread .

 

[BPSabelhaus]

Alex is notoriously picky about greens. I leave clovers full because she actually likes those, but everything else gets chopped up fine so she gets greens with the bugs. I'll do one or two larger roaches to get her attention then mixed into the greens are smaller roaches, meal/wax/ BSFL etc... She will wait for a clean shot though lol The insects are all fed with greens, fruits etc... I do worry a bit sometimes when she's being extra picky. She definitely needs more greens.

 

[Claudiusx]

I agree with AHBD. I've written about it a bit here too:

Babies SHOULD eat their salads | Dietary Needs

Baby dragons should be eating their salads There is an arbitrary ratio floating around in the beardie world that growing dragons should eat 80% insects and 20% salad. Even if this ratio was based off anything viable, let's be honest, many young dragons are lucky to eat a few leaves a month...

www.beardeddragon.org

The ratio needs to be done away with. It makes no logical sense. 20/80 based off what metric? Weight of the food? Volume of the food? Quantity offered of the food?

IMO, like I dive into in the above thread, babies (and all ages of dragons) should constantly have fresh salad available to them. And they should be eating this salad throughout the day or if they prefer, all at once when you place it in the enclosure.

I believe that eating salad items is so important to the health of the dragon, that if a baby/young dragon isn't eating it's greens, insects need to be severely limited or cut out completely until the dragon starts eating greens.

-Brandon

 

[NickAVD]

Always a good question to bring up ! Still differences of opinion on it but common sense plays a big part. The 80/20 that reverses to 20/80 at a certain time is old outdated advice, only thing to be said for it is it's somewhere in between. People used to say " feed a baby 20-30 insects 3 x a day which was way over feeding. It also depends on the size and type of insect. It's going to take a LOT of bsfl for a dragon over 12" compared to the amount of dubia for a 12" dragon. Same with crickets, and then superworms can be fed regularly once a dragon is at least on average 12" [ or a few smaller supers can be fed to slightly smaller beardies ] so there are going to be guesses all over the place.

Greens can be fed pretty much all the dragon wants. The thing to be aware of is putting an amount that looks like a tails worth of insects, like 1/4 of the dragon's body weight and just letting them gorge and get get stuffed. A healthy appetite is good but the proportions should still be managed. Many beardies really don;t know when to stop so it's up to us to keep them from gaining too much weight, especially with too fast a growth rate. So those are just some of my ideas for this thread .

I create this topic not just out of idle interest.
A year ago, when I posted a video with Foxy, you said that he looked good and was an ideal to strive for (he was then 2 years old and weighed 460 grams).
A year has passed since then and now Foxy is brumating, before the start of brumation he weighed 540 grams. Immediately before brumation, he ate almost no greens. He received roaches 2 times a week, 10 - 12 pieces no larger than an inch in size. Of course, I offered him greens daily and fed the roaches exclusively greens. I began to reduce the portion of roaches to 8 pieces. Then Foxy said: "Well, OK, there is not enough food, then I'm going to brumate!"
And now I am thinking about what to do after brumation.
Do you think I should try to maintain the number of roaches - 8 pieces 2 times a week? I saw somewhere on the forum an opinion that dragons usually stop eating greens before brumation and can gain a little weight. In this case, I can keep the amount of 10-12 pieces.
In the summer, he ate 10-12 roaches and this did not stop him from eating greens, but in this mode he began to weigh 540 grams ... In general, I got a little confused in searching for the right path.
Here are the origins of my question about how to determine the number of insects. I apologize for the fact that there was so much text.

 

[NickAVD]

Alex is notoriously picky about greens. I leave clovers full because she actually likes those, but everything else gets chopped up fine so she gets greens with the bugs. I'll do one or two larger roaches to get her attention then mixed into the greens are smaller roaches, meal/wax/ BSFL etc... She will wait for a clean shot though lol The insects are all fed with greens, fruits etc... I do worry a bit sometimes when she's being extra picky. She definitely needs more greens.

Yes, I tried mixing roaches and greens. It didn't work, he's a good hunter.
I tried to develop a reflex: eat greens - get a treat (roaches or locusts), this doesn't work either. He just waits for bugs, he guesses that I have them, you just have to wait.

 

[NickAVD]

I agree with AHBD. I've written about it a bit here too:

Babies SHOULD eat their salads | Dietary Needs

Baby dragons should be eating their salads There is an arbitrary ratio floating around in the beardie world that growing dragons should eat 80% insects and 20% salad. Even if this ratio was based off anything viable, let's be honest, many young dragons are lucky to eat a few leaves a month...

www.beardeddragon.org

The ratio needs to be done away with. It makes no logical sense. 20/80 based off what metric? Weight of the food? Volume of the food? Quantity offered of the food?

IMO, like I dive into in the above thread, babies (and all ages of dragons) should constantly have fresh salad available to them. And they should be eating this salad throughout the day or if they prefer, all at once when you place it in the enclosure.

I believe that eating salad items is so important to the health of the dragon, that if a baby/young dragon isn't eating it's greens, insects need to be severely limited or cut out completely until the dragon starts eating greens.

-Brandon

Thanks for the link, I've already read your article, but I read it again to refresh my memory.
I completely agree with what's written there. I see that Foxy knows that salad and greens are food, he just doesn't want to eat it every day.
I already wrote that he gets bugs twice a week.
Would you advise not to give him bugs at all until he eats salad?
Or could the method of reducing the number of insects also work?

 

[xp29]

The good news is he'll be hungry after brumation. Offer greens first. Bugs only after greens. Maybe he'll dive in because he is hungry, that's my plan for Sinatra. Sinatra is notoriously hard to get to eat anything but hornworms.

 

[Chris.]

As you probably know by now here in Germany we tend to feed our reptiles quite a bit less than in the US. That being said when I got my dragons they were eating their salads from they get go, at 2 months of age.
Also I think with reptiles and general they can go on much less food than we give them credit for and in captivity it is a lot easier to overfeed them than to underfeed them.

The advice I have been given in the beginning was to give them an equivalent of 3 to 4 food items that are around the size of their heads per meal. This has worked really well for me so far and I only adjust this based on how much of their greenery they eat.
For Luis, my adult, that means he gets insects (3 adult Dubias and maybe 1 or 2 superworms) twice a week or some times only once a week based on his interest in the salad bowl. Nowadays I tend to stay on the lower end since his last blood work showed high uric acid levels...

 

[NickAVD]

The good news is he'll be hungry after brumation. Offer greens first. Bugs only after greens. Maybe he'll dive in because he is hungry, that's my plan for Sinatra. Sinatra is notoriously hard to get to eat anything but hornworms.

This was my plan last year. Things didn't go according to plan. Foxy had his own plans for this.lol After brumation he really started to want to eat, but he started with hornworms. Then some dubias and only after that he started eating greens. He ate greens very well, I would say with the same desire as bugs. As you can see, this is not the plan I was counting on, but in the end he ate greens all summer! I don't understand how this works.

 

[NickAVD]

As you probably know by now here in Germany we tend to feed our reptiles quite a bit less than in the US. That being said when I got my dragons they were eating their salads from they get go, at 2 months of age.
Also I think with reptiles and general they can go on much less food than we give them credit for and in captivity it is a lot easier to overfeed them than to underfeed them.

The advice I have been given in the beginning was to give them an equivalent of 3 to 4 food items that are around the size of their heads per meal. This has worked really well for me so far and I only adjust this based on how much of their greenery they eat.
For Luis, my adult, that means he gets insects (3 adult Dubias and maybe 1 or 2 superworms) twice a week or some times only once a week based on his interest in the salad bowl. Nowadays I tend to stay on the lower end since his last blood work showed high uric acid levels...

That's a good idea, about 3-4 insects. I haven't seen such a recommendation before.
I think my 12 small Dubias are equal to 3-4 of your adults. I don't feed adults because of their chitinous shell, which is poorly digested in the stomach, and also because of the possible high level of uric acid in adults. Maybe you should also give young cockroaches?
I should receive an order with lab scales in 10 days, I will try to more accurately calculate how much an adult roach weighs and how much a small inch roach weighs. I will write the results of the measurements in this thread.

 

[xp29]

As you probably know by now here in Germany we tend to feed our reptiles quite a bit less than in the US. That being said when I got my dragons they were eating their salads from they get go, at 2 months of age.
Also I think with reptiles and general they can go on much less food than we give them credit for and in captivity it is a lot easier to overfeed them than to underfeed them.

The advice I have been given in the beginning was to give them an equivalent of 3 to 4 food items that are around the size of their heads per meal. This has worked really well for me so far and I only adjust this based on how much of their greenery they eat.
For Luis, my adult, that means he gets insects (3 adult Dubias and maybe 1 or 2 superworms) twice a week or some times only once a week based on his interest in the salad bowl. Nowadays I tend to stay on the lower end since his last blood work showed high uric acid levels...

That's a good idea, about 3-4 insects. I haven't seen such a recommendation before.
I think my 12 small Dubias are equal to 3-4 of your adults. I don't feed adults because of their chitinous shell, which is poorly digested in the stomach, and also because of the possible high level of uric acid in adults. Maybe you should also give young cockroaches?
I should receive an order with lab scales in 10 days, I will try to more accurately calculate how much an adult roach weighs and how much a small inch roach weighs. I will write the results of the measurements in this thread.

Uric acid levels in dubias is directly related to their protein intake. Baby dubias need protein to grow, adult dubias need it to breed. Any size in-between should not be given protein at all. They convert protein to uric acid the same way we convert to fat and for the same reasons. In lean times they convert it back into energy for life. You have to starve the lil buggers in order to force them to do so. (Or not feed protein in the first place). I think pretty much any commercial dubia chow is loaded with protein, it's much better to feed your feeders strictly veggies.
I think the commercial chow is largely responsible for the amount of gout we see in beardies now.

 

[Chris.]

Uric acid is indeed a byproduct of metabolizing protein. It is better to feed less often but more bugs so the protein can be metabolized proper and the uric acid can be dealt with.
In the roaches it should not be an issue unless you feed them high protein stuff which (from my experience) is not really a must in any of their life stages. Mine get some oats and some pumpkin from time to time and the population explodes.

Also I'm not certain if for many small roaches compared to few big ones, the ratio of chitin/protein is not close to equal if not in favour of the adult ones. In any case, you would not feed roaches exclusively, you would mix it up with worms and locusts or crickets or snails. Personally I don't worry about chitin unless I would recognize any digestive issue.

The 3-4 bugs seems to be around the point where you describe Foxy not jumping for them anymore.

 

[AHBD]

Uric acid levels in dubias is directly related to their protein intake. Baby dubias need protein to grow, adult dubias need it to breed. Any size in-between should not be given protein at all. They convert protein to uric acid the same way we convert to fat and for the same reasons. In lean times they convert it back into energy for life. You have to starve the lil buggers in order to force them to do so. (Or not feed protein in the first place). I think pretty much any commercial dubia chow is loaded with protein, it's much better to feed your feeders strictly veggies.
I think the commercial chow is largely responsible for the amount of gout we see in beardies now.

Dubia can be fed a variety of veggies so that can make up a good portion of their diet. Any commercial food that is plant/grain based with very low or no protein as well.

 

[NickAVD]

Uric acid levels in dubias is directly related to their protein intake. Baby dubias need protein to grow, adult dubias need it to breed. Any size in-between should not be given protein at all. They convert protein to uric acid the same way we convert to fat and for the same reasons. In lean times they convert it back into energy for life. You have to starve the lil buggers in order to force them to do so. (Or not feed protein in the first place). I think pretty much any commercial dubia chow is loaded with protein, it's much better to feed your feeders strictly veggies.
I think the commercial chow is largely responsible for the amount of gout we see in beardies now.

I agree with you, I also think that commercial food will most likely lead to the accumulation of uric acid. I have read many unpleasant stories on our forum about gout and I also do not trust roach sellers. I do not think that they feed their colonies only vegetables. Therefore, I have been keeping a colony of dubia since the very moment Foxy appeared in our family. I am sure that they eat only vegetables and only those that are suitable for dragon nutrition in terms of vitamin and mineral composition. For example, arugula, dandelion, zucchini or pumpkin, I can give some carrots or an apple.