How much to feed?

[lplotkina]

Hi,
My beardie is about 18 inches long, and since I am a new owner, I have only been feeding him about 10 crickets a day, with lots of fresh greens, other veggies, and superworms (3 at a time, usually daily). According to what I am reading here...I am VASTLY underfeeding him. How much should I be feeding him?

 

[augsburg1530]

Each dragon eats differently. Our Spike is almost 10 months old and almost 18 inches long and he eats between 10 and 15 dubia most days and only 4 or 5 dubia other days plus some of his salad. He is healthy, happy and a bit tubby too! So for your dragon, 10 a day may be good. What most of us do is allow our dragon to eat as many live feeders as they like during a 10 minute period. If you do that, they will self regulate how much they eat. As they get older, around 18 months, they slow way down on eating live feeders and most switch to about 80% of their diet being salad and 20% being live protein.

Hope that helps,

Eric

 

[Catalyst]

Do you know how old your dragon is? That will dictate to a large degree how much live food you should be offering him.

 

[lplotkina]

According to the guy I got him from, he is about two years old. If that is true, he seems very small for his age. That could be because of his awful nutrition in that person's care. However, he doesn't show much interest in greens, and seems to eagerly eat protein, so he may actually be younger.

 

[augsburg1530]

I have heard of other abused adult dragon's craving protein. I think it is because they are starved and desperatly need the protein. I would feed him as many live feeders as he wants to eat in a 10 minute period a couple of times a day and offer healthy salads every day. Once he gets healthy again, he may then slow down eating the live feeders and eat more salad.

Eric

 

[Catalyst]

Its not uncommon for an adult dragon in north america to be 18 inches long, my girl is only 16 inches long and two years old (a combination of genetics and mistakes I made while learning to care for her properly in the first couple of months). I'm not sure I'd risk overloading him on the live feeders by letting him eat all he wants - an excess of protein and fat in an adult dragon's diet can lead to fatty liver disease. A typical adult dragon's diet should be 25-50 bugs a week (25-30 if you're using superworms, and 50 if you're using crickets) and a large daily salad. If your dragon is underweight, then you could offer a bit more live food than this or add in additional bugs (i.e. silk worms or horn worms) on top of the weekly allotment of live food.

His craving of protein could have nothing to do with whether he was abused or not - some adult dragons would happily eat themselves silly on bugs regardless of how well they've been raised and fed.

 

[lplotkina]

Thanks so much for all the help, everyone!

So, how can I get him more interested in his salads??? He ate some radicchio today that I chopped up into his salad, and a little bit of endive. He also had some apple today, and he went CRAZY over that...he loved it. However, I am having trouble finding him a staple green that he likes. He seems to be quite the salad snob.

 

[Catalyst]

Here are some common tips for getting a dragon to eat their salad:

Try mixing in foods of different colours. The colours often attract the dragon's attention to the salad, and while they are checking out the coloured foods they may try out their staple greens as well. Carrots, squash, and prickly pear are all good examples of brightly coloured "salad toppers" you could try.

Try different strong scented dragon safe herbs and plants - some have found that mixing a small amount of parsley or similar plants is enough to get the dragons eating their salad.

Mix bugs in with the salad. Sometimes the movement alone is enough to attract your dragon to the salad. Or you can mix in worms that will grab onto the salad (silk worms do this) so that your dragon gets some greens by accident when he picks the bugs out of it.

Make your live feeding schedule random. If your dragon can't depend on getting live food every day, he's more likely to pick at the greens when he gets hungry. My girl gets worms 2 - 3 times a week, always on random days.

Hold off on the live food until he eats his salad. A healthy dragon won't starve themselves and will eventually start eating the salad. However, a dragon can also hold off for a fair while before giving in so its a matter of knowing ahead of time how long you're willing to let your guy go without food and being more stubborn than your dragon is. Its also a method that should only be used with a healthy dragon.

 

[O-Gonchothedragon]

i feed mine the same amount, with rare mws 9cause impaction). he seems to be doing ok with it