I think the largest expense for me are the superworms and crickets, but I have discovered veggies that my dragons WILL eat (They mostly wasted their salad before!) I buy frozen diced vegetables (the 1kg packets that we eat) and remove a few every evening to thaw in the fridge. In the morning I add a teaspoonful of Purity first food for babies (either pears, apples, butternut or carrots...sometimes a mixture - never mixed veg because it contains onion) The Purity keeps the veggies moist. Velcro LOVES this.. I feed it to her with a teaspoon and she attacks it as if she is fighting with prey! She prefers to pick out the carrots and beans, but eats the peas and corn if she has to! Originally i plonked a superworm and a cricket in the mix to encourage her to eat her veggies...I think she expects them to be hiding somewhere in her bowl now, so ocassionally I add one or two!!!
Sometime during the day we walk in the garden and she "picks" her own greens: she loves the flowers on the pawpaw trees...and the odd snail that lives around the pawpaws as well

She eats dandelion flowers and the leaves (so for once I am pleased about weeds in my lawn

) and the nasturtium leaves and flowers are also popular. ... so are the honeysuckle and grenadilla plants...Velcro always looks so proud of herself when she has picked her own food in the garden! The other day a HUGE praying mantis became a value-added snack. I was surprised that she managed to eat the WHOLE thing, boney legs and all.
When we buy plants from the nursery, we always choose edible types whenever possible - because of our beardies :mrgreen:
It can cost a forune to keep a beardie, but it need not!