Only wants to be hand fed

[Shannonc]

Mushu will not hunt for crickets and I am worried he is refusing greens. If I put crickets in his viv he will sit there. They will crawl on him and Mushu will shake and shut eyes like he is afraid of them. But when we hand feed them he is a champ at eating them. Greens he will take 1 or maybe 2 bites and turn his head on me. I tried mustard greens, dandelion greens, Kale, collard greens...he likes peas but I do not give that daily. Any advice?

 

[Picklepies]

My smallest will only be hand fed, I found with greens putting them on a plastic dish (I usually use a bug lid) with nice worms and then put that on a vibrating thing (I use my phone) will get mines attention and they'll eat some of the greens can't help with the hand feeding, but I'd like to know how to make mine hunt! X

 

[Stres]

Mushu will not hunt for crickets and I am worried he is refusing greens. If I put crickets in his viv he will sit there. They will crawl on him and Mushu will shake and shut eyes like he is afraid of them. But when we hand feed them he is a champ at eating them. Greens he will take 1 or maybe 2 bites and turn his head on me. I tried mustard greens, dandelion greens, Kale, collard greens...he likes peas but I do not give that daily. Any advice?

I can't really give advice as I'm new to beardie care, however my own experience over the past few months of owning my little guy may ease your worry a bit.

I put naboo straight into a 5x2x2 vivarium when he was around ten weeks old, due to the size of the viv and what iv read about crickets being able to bite dragons if left in the viv (especially overnight) I never felt comfortable dropping in 20 plus crickets and leaving him to hunt them. Instead I fed him one at a time until he turned his head away or closed his eyes.

Over the past month or so iv no longer needed to do this as he started to get far more active with them to the point where I can now just pour 5 or 10 in at a time (right in front of him) he will happily eat them and now he will chase the ones that he notices running away, the ones he doesn't I'll just flick back towards him and he'll then grab them.

I'm still not comfortable leaving them in there and walking away as there's just so much room for them to hide away, but there has been a big change in how he eats them.

As for greens he'd only ever eat small bits that I hand fed him and everyday id come back home from work and see the salad bowl untouched, I kept putting it out and slowly he's started to eat it without me. He still doesn't finish what I put out but he eats a good handful of veg now most days.

He's around 6 months old now and seems to be getting more independent in his eating, hope this helps a little bit.