# of roaches adult beardires eat a day?

[Kaida520]

So i am thinking about ordering roaches....just thinking though .they really give me the hee-bee-jee-bees. i think crix are gross also lol,but i dealt with them when my two guys were juvies.now they eat soft bodied worms as their feeder source,but that is getting realllllly expensive. My female,blossom, gets stopped up on supers,so i dont do those anymore.

but anyways...i was just wondering how many roaches your adult beardies eat a day?(i dont know if trucks vs. dubias makes a difference)

ill do it for my guys even if there is a little involved lol

 

[patrickb]

Don't think about them, just do it. If you can handle crickets, you can handle roaches. Getting over that initial "fear factor" is the big hurdle, then you may find you are playing with the roaches one day.

You should expect to feed anywhere from 25-40% roaches than you would crickets roughly. This is just a rough estimate based off of numbers I have seen from members here on the forums posting. It would vary a bit from beardie to beardie, and even depending upon species of the roach being fed. Dubias seem a bit more meatier, but have more shell than a turk, so it is subjective as to whether they are more filling.

 

[Kaida520]

oh ok cool. but when you say "You should expect to feed anywhere from 25-40% roaches than you would crickets roughly" do you 25-40% more or less? thanks!

 

[Theroachguy]

my adults will eat 3-5 adult males with wings clipped or 5-8 medium sized roaches 3 days a week and once a week ill toss in 4-5 super worms then the next week super two days and roaches tow days.

 

[Kaida520]

oh okay. which species is that? or does it make a difference?thanks for the info!

 

[BestRoach]

He breeds and I assume feeds Blaptica Dubia. Dubia are a medium sized roach, and unless your feeding something truly large (B. Fusca, G. Portentosa), it shouldn't matter. Obviously smaller species like N. Cinerea (lobsters) and B. Lateralis (turkistans) will require more per feeding.

 

[Kaida520]

oh ok.thanks for the input.i just may give roaches a whirl.myself and my husband are living w/ my parents right now...so now its convincing them to let me have them here(although theyve never minded the nasty crickets or anything else ive brought into the house)haha

 

[KINGSAME]

Should the wings of the adult male Dubia be clipped before feeding the BD?

 

[diggerdrake]

I have fed a few adult males to my little one without the wings clipped and she had no problem with them .. my little one is 16" and I only give her one a day at most. otherwise she gets nymphs and/or supers and has never had a problem digesting . it may be a good idea to clip the wings as they are not food and dont get digested

 

[WAFisherman]

I don't find it necessary to clip the wings, but I have found wing material in the bath water after pooing from both my water dragon and beardie. So sometimes I grab the males by the back end of the wings with my feeding tongs\tweezers and use scissors in my other hand to clip them 3/4 of the way up and let them drop in the tank, dispose of the wings, repeat...

 

[BestRoach]

I find clipping or ripping the wings off is a tad cruel, and I do not practice it. As long as your temps are correct, and the dragic of sufficient size, it shouldn't be an issue. Also, if you have to replace the uneaten male....he may die from damage recieved during the wing removal....so don't cut to low.

 

[Ihaggerty1313]

This was a question that I had for a while. People told me that they eat just as many Dubia as crix. I couldn't see that as Dubia are bulkier and bigger than crix. So I put a bunch of my customers to the test w/ their lizards on Dubia and turns out I was right. A full grown beardie takes down 3-6 Adults and large nymphs a sitting, 4 x's a week. We cut other lizards intake such as Tokay's, Skinks, Chameleons by at least 50% if not more.

This doesn't seem to apply for baby beardies though. They GOBBLE up a ton of properly sized roaches. I'm guessing because that beardies grow at an astonishing rate for a lizard and have a much quicker metabolism than other lizards due to the fact they are more active.

As for clipping the wings. To each their own but I never do it. I'm sure that the wild form, our animals eat weirder things and probably ingest all sorts of material from the Tropical forests that just pass through them harmlessly. I can tell you right now that wild animals don't worry about the whole "size" thing that we worry about. A meal doesn't come easy and some of the food items I've seen wild lizards attack blow my mind! Big, small, HUGE.... It don't seem to matter. They are just out for that kill since they never know when the next opportunity will arise. I wouldn't lose too much sleep over this issue.

-Ian

 

[ScooterBlenny]

oh ok.thanks for the input.i just may give roaches a whirl.myself and my husband are living w/ my parents right now...so now its convincing them to let me have them here(although theyve never minded the nasty crickets or anything else ive brought into the house)haha

You've got to train yourself to call them "beetles" so they don't freak people out so badly

 

[Kaida520]

lol thats awsome....ill have to do that "uh,uh yeah the beetles...they mimmick the look of roaches only to scare would-be predators away"