little beardie big attitude

[oogieboogie7189]

So i got my beardie Feb 14th he was 7" from nose to tail, he's growing about one inch per week 9" last time i checked, one is that normal? Two he started shedding around his face about 4 days ago and since then he has been a little helliant puffing up and hissing anytime i get near his cage and his appetite has sky rocketed i bought 50 crickets yesterday and have to get more cuz he's out.... i know they get irritable when shedding but i think he's taking it to a while new level, he even hisses at his food and attacks them like they're Satan's spawns! Its there anything i can do to help alleviate some of his anger?

 

[Soulwind]

Everything sounds pretty much perfectly normal to me.

At that age they'll eat you out of house and home, and they grow
like little weeds (both traits are quite obviously related ).

You might want to look into buying your feeders in bulk online, or even
starting your own feeder colony if possible. It's much cheaper in the long run.

As for the attitude, not much you can really do there. Some just get
quite cranky when shedding (especially when it's around the face).

You can do all the standard taming stuff and it might help some, but if it's his
shed that's making him cranky and that's not his normal behavior, then you'll
probably just have to wait it out.

 

[Katiedud]

The appetite on the babies/juveniles are insane. I brought my little guy, who's a juvenile, home from a herp show, with 350 small/medium crickets. They didn't even last a week. I personally wont feed dubia (deep seeded childhood fear) but I know a lot of people do and from the sounds of it, it's an excellent idea for nutrition, convenience, and cost. Though it's a little expensive starting it up, they'll practically pay for themselves.

 

[randtm]

50 crickets is two meals for a bearded that size. Make sure you look at the articles on husbandry here on the site, especially the nutrition and feeding articles. For a single beardie, we decided raising a feeding colony was more work than it was worth, but we order crickets a 1000 at a time. With an adult bearded, they last about 5-6 weeks. Adults only eat crickets every other day. Yours should still get them every day. Check out www.ghann.com or www.premiumcrickets.com. It just doesn't make sense with beardeds to buy crickets locally. They just eat too many of them. Make sure you note which greens are nutritionally best for beardeds too. I hear stories all the time of people feeding them spinach and kale, etc. with no idea those are not good greens for beardeds. You should stick to mustard, turnip, collards, and endive. Ours loves occasional grated squash and carrots, but note those should only be occasional foods and not routine. Also, just to make sure you know... NO MEALWORMS!

 

[KarenInCA]

Curious about the feeding you are talking about. How do you keep crickets alive for 5-6 weeks? I get ours locally because they start to die off after about a week. We are feeding the crickets a green cube with some water on it (forgot the name of the green cube), so maybe that's why they only last a week or less.
Also, our BD is about 7 months old now. I feed him the greens that are recommended, and cut/shave various squashes onto the greens with a dusting. I assumed most squashes are okay to feed daily. What would be the reason for only adding squashes periodically?

 

[randtm]

We order the cricket chow from Ghann's along with the crickets. We also use the crystals that you soak in water and then keep a handful of them in with the crickets for them to drink from. You can get enough to last for years dirt cheap on ebay. We keep both on plastic lids like saucers so it stays fairly neat. We use a 50 qt tote bin to keep the crickets in. The crickets keep pretty well for weeks. Only during the depths of winter or height of summer when they have been exposed to temperature extremes during shipping do we lose more than a few to die off. Even then, it's not enough to negate the savings of ordering them in bulk.

I've always followed the feeding guidance from this site: http://www.beautifuldragons.com/Nutrition.html

It's the best feeding chart I've seen for beardies.

Looking at the chart, I now see that squash is listed as a daily food, so it sounds like what you are doing is fine. I believe that when we got our dragon, squash was listed as occasional. Maybe it was always listed as daily, I'm not sure. Either way, sounds like you're feeding the right kinds of greens daily so adding squash would be fine even if it wasn't a daily food, I would think. Your dragon would still be getting proper nutrition.

Interestingly, that chart also shows mealworms as okay occasionally, and maybe they are nutritionally, but I've seen so much discussion on this forum about how risky they are, I wouldn't use them. When we first got our dragon and before I read all the posts about how bad they can be, we tried them once. They came back up about an hour later and we never used them again, so I tend to agree with other posters here to avoid them.

 

[dynaMOna]

Wow, I'm glad I found this thread!

My little guy is an eater, and advice on keeping those crickets is going to help. The little cricket house I was given gets VERY stinky after several days, so using a bigger, storage type of bin will be welcome.

 

[CooperDragon]

I second premiumcrickets. Always had good luck with them. I housed 1000 at a time in the 20gal tank I used when Cooper was a baby. Just filled a dish with water crystals and a dish with grain feed (microwave it when you get it to kill mites) and they lived in cardboard tubes. Heating mat helps in the winter if the temps get low in the basement.