No wonder!

[KarenInCA]

No wonder so many people are confused about what to feed their dragons.
Besides pet shops often giving bad advise, there seems to be a few websites that look legitimate, but give a lot of misinformation..
I hope I don't get into trouble for posting one of them. It's http://www.drsfostersmith.com/pic/article.cfm?aid=824

"Young dragons should be fed 2-3 times daily. If insufficient food is fed, young dragons may nip at the tails and toes of their cage mates."

This makes it sound as if it's only juveniles that have a difficult time with cage mates....and that it is only if they are not fed enough food. They speak nothing about over crowding or being territorial, or even still, that it has anything to do with being older and territorial. A couple weeks ago, I was at our local reptile shop, and they had a free to good home baby dragon. She was put into the viv with an older dragon, for companionship, by the owner, and he bit off her tail, and three limbs. It's possible that he was hungry, but I doubt it. He was telling her to get the heck out of his house! And the poor girl had nowhere to go. She did, by the way, get adopted, as I found out today. But, honestly, if I didn't read up on the internet, except for this "Doctors" page, I would have also assumed that they can be housed together with no issues...except under certain circumstances, and not assume the opposite to be true.

Meat food sources for your Bearded Dragon can include pinky mice (for adults) and insects such as:
Crickets; pinhead crickets for juveniles
Mealworms
Wax worms - high in fat, so feed sparingly
King worms
Earthworms
Cockroaches

Why include mealworms at all, or wax worms if they are high in fat? Why not just leave those out completely?? Why not include phoenix worms here, or horn worms, or even butter worms instead of listing wax worms? And I won't even comment again about the mention of mealworms.
Has anyone here included earthworms in their diet? Just curious if that is even something that's worth trying, or if that too is bogus information.

It goes on to say that greens should consist of 20% of your dragons diet. There is no mention of it being 20% for a BABY or JUVENILE diet.
It also does not talk about dusting with calcium, but then links to a purchase page for a prepared diet, that gives all the food supplements you need. Now, why didn't I see that one coming?
Honestly, this page needs to either be updated with ACCURATE information, or shut down!!

 

[Taterbug]

If you look around enough, you'll find plenty of sites that either agree or disagree with certain practices. A lot of the popular breeders have care sheets that don't match the guide/advice here... I've seen guides from vets suggest wild caught prey... I'm not sure it's all "misinformation" at any-rate, just different ways of keeping.

That page isn't really so bad... They do mention dusting with calcium, gut-loading and even what food to gutload with and veggies to offer. They mention being territorial on the housing page, and while they don't mention thermostats for heat mats, the caging guidelines aren't so bad. No it's not a thorough or complete guide, and no I wouldn't like to see anyone follow it exclusively, but its not the worst out there and that company is a huge mail order pet store, basically.

As for prey, I think too many people limit their dragons diets too strictly. Earthworms are usually discouraged - folks claim they are very high in parasites, but I'm not sure that's true or not. (It's really hard to get anything from google searching "do worms have parasites", and no one who makes the claim has responded to me). But, as a feeder they are high is calcium, protein and moisture.

As for mealworms and pinky mice - I don't have a strong opinion other than there isn't a good reason to feed them, if you have something better.

 

[KarenInCA]

Thanks Taterbug. That does make me feel a little bit better.
I was referring to looking at that ONE page, not necessarily filtering through the pages. Just pretty much, "what do I feed my bearded dragon" information. I didn't see it talking about dusting on that page, but maybe that was because I was so disgusted that I didn't filter through it well enough.
If someone in a store does not know the information, why do they have to fake it? Why not just leave it off the list in this case, or in person just day... I DONT KNOW.

 

[Taterbug]

Yeah, that really gets me too. There are differences in keeping, plenty of folks with various experience/opinion will argue till they are blue in the face, but why people in positions of "authority" just make stuff up or parrot the information on the packaging... I have no clue. It's part of what really bothers me about petstores/packaging... the information given on the boxes... consumers are pretty eager to trust these things (it our nature), but we should be able too. Makes me loath to buy any products from stores or certain brands...

What confuses me is why is it wrong, what's the point? Sometimes the proper info is just as easy to give, or not mentioning it and it never comes up... but stuff that is obviously wrong? The conspiracy leaning part if me has some ideas anyway... ($$$$)