Salad for beardeds: what and how do you feed.

[ladybriann]

Tonight I chopped up 'salad' for my bearded dragons. I have 2 adult males, and 2 baby females. I chopped mustard greens, collard greens, turnip greens, roamaine and carrots into 1/4 to 1/2 inch pieces.

I was wondering #1 what do you include in your beardie salad, #2 how do you feed it to your dragon. ie, by hand, in a dish, on the floor of their cage, floating on water???? And #3 do you chop it, tear it, serve it by the leaf? If you chop it....how small are your pieces, do you feed differently depending on how big/old the dragon is?

How much do you feed and how often? Babies and adults: same or different

please share your normal feeding routine.

 

[AlexBoylan]

My routine is so simple

Breakfast: I grab a handful of turnip greens from the freezer, heat them up for a few seconds. Feed them to my bearded dragons.
Lunch: 5 dubia per dragon. Most of the time, I'll just take them both outside where I keep the colony and just keep giving them dubia until they're full.
Supper: the same as lunch.

I also put calcium on the dubia every second day.

 

[Paradon]

Remember! Stay away from lettuces! It defficient in nutrients! And you want to grate all hard veggies so your bearded can digest them, or if you like cook them until they are soft to make it digestable. Your bearded cannot digest big chunks of raw hard veggies, and it can cause intestinal blockage if you feed it to them that way. So never feed them big chunks of hard veggies. And please follow the guideline on what is good to feed as staple and what is good on occasion on http://www.beautifuldragons.com/Nutrition.html

Oh, when I feed them, I usually alternate between live feeders and salad. So one day they get salad and the next live feeders.

 

[AlexBoylan]

The veggies I feed are definetely very soft; they pretty much fall apart in my hand when I go to serve them to my masters.

See what I did there?

... Nevermind, it wasn't that funny anyways.

 

[Paradon]

I'm sorry! I didn't read your post properly! I'm having brain farts right now! [laugh] Are you talking about hard vegetables or leafy green vegetables. Hard veggies would be something, like, carrots, parsnips, turnips and winter squash. Leafy green vegetables would something, like, dandelion greens, collard greens, mustard greens and escarole.

Anyway, I forgot to mention... I feed the adults by alternating between live feeders and salad. One day they get live food and the next day...salad. I tend to feed everything early in the morning so they have all day to digest them; this way they can properly digest them and get more nutrients. i give them one hour to warm up after the light is turned on before feeding.

For babies, I put down salad first thing in the morning, an hour after the light has turned on. Then later in the morning I feed them appropreate size, live food. I just leave the salad in the cage for them to nibble on all day... As you can see I do the same thing for babies...which is feeding them in the morning for better digestion.

 

[AlexBoylan]

I feed them the greens from turnips. I usually heat it up until it's very mushy and then feed it to them for breakfast. If they finish all the turnip greens that I gave them in the morning, then I'll put some more in for them.

 

[Paradon]

Sorry! Didn't mean to lecture you. :wink:

 

[AlexBoylan]

Haha, no problem, any extra knowledge is better than none.

 

[Paradon]

I'm from Thailand, so I tend to speak what's on my mine, and I tend to be very literal, too. Sorry!

 

[ladybriann]

So, I know you're not supposed to fee lettuce to the BDs but what about mixing Romaine in with the other greens, like turnip, collard, mustard. My girls really like the Romaine, I thought I heard it's not as bad as iceburg or leaf lettuce. I have trouble getting my males to eat their greens/veggies. One is a 5 yr old rescue, he is very thin yet he hardly eats ANYTHING; and believe me I've tried every feeder out there and most veggies too. He eats just enough to stay alive but not gain weight. My other male is HUGH (635 grams) yet about the only thing he wants to eat are hornworms. Very frustrating dragons.

 

[AlexBoylan]

I think it's fine, even though romaine lettuce does not have nutritional value, I heard that it keeps the little guys and girls well hydrated. Although, it's funny, Povi is almost the same way, he's so skinny. I'll feed him about 40 dubia in a day, and he'll dispose of it so quickly, and will still be the same size as before he ate.

 

[AtlasStrike]

I would think about using fresh greens instead of frozen, since freezing greens destroys a lot of the vitamin and mineral content of them, and heating them afterwards furthers this process. The cellulose also breaks down in the freezing/reheating process. If you have to feed frozen greens, I would blanch them and add a vitamin and mineral supplement so they don't get completely mushy and lose all their nutritional value.

 

[AlexBoylan]

I tried that already; all the turnip greens went bad in a week :? some of our beardies just don't eat vegetables as often as some do, this is why I have to freeze them.

 

[AtlasStrike]

That is why I was suggesting blanching, however if you store them in a humidity controlled refrigerator, they should keep for a few weeks at least. I keep mine in a tupperware in the fridge with one corner left open and paper towel on the bottom. Every other day, I take them out, rinse them under cold water and replace the paper towel. They stay good for several weeks that way.

 

[BeardieNewbie15]

I heard that carrot tops are good for beardies? That beautiful dragon nutrition sheet is lovely, but NONE of my local grocery stores carry any of the "daily staples" except for squash...but squash makes my beardies have runny poop so I try and avoid it. Any suggestions?