Protein Feeders Alternatives

[Maize]

My Female beardie is a real picky eater. She wont touch crickets, silk worms and butter worms. I started to feed her Dubias and she loved them. But I was informed by my roomate that he no longer wants the roaches in his house since they tipped over the other day. So as of right now she will only eat Superworms. I try not give her too much, due to the Chilin. As far as I know Superworms are softer and easier to digest the mealworms (which I dont give her). I went to a show yesterday and decided to buy a really small pinky. She went for it right away and then spit it out! She is so picky!

Since I'm limited with what I can feed her as far as Live food with high protien. Can anyone suggest something? I was watching beardie videos on You Tube and one video shows someone feeding a Anole. Is this OK to do? I'm sure in the wild they eat when they can and whatever they can. I'm just running of options. I hope when she starts to mature she wil stop being to picky.

 

[jbowers]

It's a shame you cant keep roaches, they are very good if your dragon will eat em. I would suggest phoenix worms first, but they arent the cheapest option.

How large is your beardie? Supers are fine as a staple as long as the dragon is over about 14-16 inches in length and their poo doesnt seem to contain chunks of undigested worm. I love feeding mine supers, and he absolutely loves them, but I like to keep it varied with crickets, and soon to be grasshoppers.

 

[Maize]

Pheonix worms she will do, but they are expensive. I havent tried grasshoppers, do you know of any good sites to order them on? As far has her digesting the SW. The only thing that I have seen is may be 1-2 SW heads in her poo. But I can understand that, the heads are really hard. But she definitly is going poo, BIG!

I traied feeding her another small pinky and she wanted nothing to do with it. Can small Anole lizards be feed to beardies? I was watching a video on Youtube of some beardies eating them.

 

[zebraflavencs]

I sent you the beautiful dragons list via email. Stick to that. You shouldn't feed anything from the wild, since you don't know where it has been, or what it has been exposed to.
Janie

 

[Maize]

Yes I checked the list out and didnt see Anoles on there. I'm just trying to think of other alternatives then to SW. The roaches are great but I cant have them anymore. Maybe grass hoppers?

 

[zebraflavencs]

Hoppers and locust.
Janie.

 

[jargonchipmunk]

there's also a video on utube of a beardie eating a full grown russian hampster much larger than its head! Utube (and wiki's) are the easiest way to get yourself into trouble with just about ANY project.

In the wild beardies do eat anything they can fit down their throat, but they also live in the wilds of the Australian bush where food is sometimes hard to come by (and certainly a lot harder to catch than in the tank lol) and the worries we have of killing our beardies with food that is too large, is still a worry out there. We just notice it more in the tanks than beardies that die in the wild, trying to eat a RABBIT or something because they were hungry lol. Plus, they get real sun all day long every day to digest with.

Stick with things that are no larger than "the space between the beardie's eyes" excluding supers and things, I guess. Pinkies... I dunno. They have decent nutrition, but beardies are fast digesters. People feed pinkies to snakes because they take their time digesting and can fully break down a mammal. Beardies are insectivores for a reason. Insects don't take long to break down and get nutrition from. It's one of the reasons beardies can grow so awefully fast! Giving that same digestive system a mammal, or reptile (while they might seem to break it down enough not to be injured by it) is somewhat wasteful. It all goes through, but a snake will get a hundred times more nutrition from a mouse than a beardie will. Heck a leopard gecko even gets more from it than beardies do. I would assume an adult beardie would get more from eating a mammal than a juvie would, but by that time they are mostly interested in salads anyway, so the point would be moot I guess.

*edit* I should mention that I am currently taking care of my first pair of beardies so you can take what I say with a grain of salt. It's my scientific brain talking here and not my uber beardie know-how. I am experienced with lots of reptiles, but beardies are somewhat new to me personally.

 

[zebraflavencs]

Quite right, J
Janie.

 

[Gregg1958]

Superworms have a major risk, they can be swallowed whole and chew a hole in the beardies GI tract. I have a friend that works at a vet and they see this happen a lot. Also, superworms are not a good stable. Any live food needs to farm raised and you need to be concerned w/ digestible bulk vs. skeletal bulk. If you are seeing skeletal bulk in the poo, then you are feeding it the wrong food.

We feed ours (6 dragons + 15 babies) crickets that we gut load. We dust the crickets w/ calcium dust every feeding. We get our crickets from Timberline and buy their cricket food and water crystals. Their prices are great. They crickets ship overnight and have very little die-off. we put them in a large Sterilite container w/ locking lid, we have egg crates for them to hid in. To catch the runaways, I put small sticky bait mouse traps along the room walls which get 99% of runaways.

You should be including leafy greens (no iceberg lettuce), squash, broccoli and some non-acidic fruit. To get our picky eater to eat greens, we took baby apple juice and sprinkle it over the greens, they went nuts for that. You should feed the vegi items first thing everyday before you add live food. I make mine wait a couple of hours before they get to hunt life food.

I also supplement with giant horn worms (tomato worms) that I get from Great Lakes Hornworms. My dragons go absolutely ga-ga over these. They love the way these guys twist and flop about and the nice juicy taste. Horn worms have almost no exoskeleton, so the digest great.

Gregg
[email protected]

 

[Maize]

It's a shame you cant keep roaches, they are very good if your dragon will eat em. I would suggest phoenix worms first, but they arent the cheapest option.

How large is your beardie? Supers are fine as a staple as long as the dragon is over about 14-16 inches in length and their poo doesnt seem to contain chunks of undigested worm. I love feeding mine supers, and he absolutely loves them, but I like to keep it varied with crickets, and soon to be grasshoppers.

jbowers

Where are you getting the grasshoppers from?