So what do you do to give your beardies variety?

[LLLReptile]

In the stores, we do everything we can to provide the animals here with variety in their diet. From mixed greens and shredded veggies, to live insects, to canned food, we feed everything!

A snapshot of an average week feeding our beardies:
Sunday - red leaf lettuce, kale, collard greens, cilantro, radish tops, shredded carrots, shredded radishes, and shredded strawberries with tops on.
Monday - gutloaded and dusted crickets
Tuesday - dusted mealworms and/or superworms (for the larger adults)
Wednesday - mixed greens again - romaine lettuce, parsley, mustard greens, shredded carrots, shredded squash, and shredded apples.
Thursday - gutloaded and dusted crickets
Friday - canned diet day: caterpillars and grasshoppers!
Saturday - skip feeding

That's just the schedule this week; it changes from week to week and day to day based on what's readily available and what's in season as far as greens go.

Some babies chowing on their greens:

Canned caterpillars are one of the most popular canned food items for beardies, for those just starting to feed canned food they are an excellent, enticing choice. Sometimes we'll even sprinkle them on the greens (or canned mealworms), since they're not alive they don't wiggle off, and it can also help entice beardies not very excited about greens to try some.

So what do you feed your beardies? What's your schedule like? Share!

-Jen

 

[Paradon]

I usually alternate live food with greens and veggies. I feed mine things like crickets, roaches and superworms for live food, and then the nex day, for greens and veggies I use the chart on the iguana forum to create a salad base and then add other things that you can find in your super market every other week to varied the diet. At least I try to varied the salad every other week. One week I may throw in kale into the salad and then back to their normal salad base and then the next after that some bok choy. It doesn't have to varied so much everyday, I guess, as long as you try to change it from week to week they should be fine. As long as you change the food from week to week, I think that makes a huge difference.

 

[elmore91011]

This was helpful, Thanks! I do have a question tho... why skip a day feeding?

 

[Jess]

I alternate supers and roaches, and get crickets once in a while too. Dudley is really weird about his salads, and he seems to prefer single-veggie salads for some reason. :roll: If I add other things to it, he will pick around them and just eat the collards. He still loves blueberries and strawberries as treats though.

 

[LLLReptile]

This was helpful, Thanks! I do have a question tho... why skip a day feeding?

To keep them hungry enough to eat what we offer them. They simply don't really need to eat every day.

-Jen

 

[elmore91011]

This was helpful, Thanks! I do have a question tho... why skip a day feeding?

To keep them hungry enough to eat what we offer them. They simply don't really need to eat every day.

-Jen

Oh Wow.. good idea... Bella is a picky eater she wants romaine and broccoli and crickets... I did discover today she loves red bell pepper =)

Thank you

 

[Paradon]

This was helpful, Thanks! I do have a question tho... why skip a day feeding?

To keep them hungry enough to eat what we offer them. They simply don't really need to eat every day.

-Jen

I try to feed everyday, but sometime they don't eat their salad after they have been fed live food, so withold the live food until they eat their salad. haha! But sometime they don't eat everyday anyway...like skipping a meal every couple or several days.. Of course, mine are fully grown.

 

[Jess]

I skip a day of food every once in a while too. They are a lot less picky when they are actually hungry!

 

[elmore91011]

Awesome thanks!!

 

[Paradon]

I see that you guys feed vegetables and greens, that you aren't supposed to feed. How come you guys do this? Do you think they get enough nutrients from the insects that it's OK to feed them those food? Thanks!

 

[LLLReptile]

I see that you guys feed vegetables and greens, that you aren't supposed to feed. How come you guys do this? Do you think they get enough nutrients from the insects that it's OK to feed them those food? Thanks!

What greens and veggies are you not supposed to feed? In moderation, everything listed is just fine. I don't see anything on that list that would cause a problem when included as a part of a varied diet.

-Jen

 

[ladyjustice33]

My dragons are sub-adults....204 and 245 grams. Niether one is very intersted in their greens. I believe the problem may be that I leave a dish with dubia in their enclosures all the time since the dubia can't get out and a snack dish with various types of worms....phoenix, butter, supers, and wax. Not all at the same time. I feed the phoenix and butters more often due to the high calcium content. Anyway, they get fresh veggies every day but don't really give them a second look. I guess they are big enough now to start to do like you do and rotate between greens and bugs? Should I keep giving them live food everyday and just offer greens like I'm doing until they reach full adulthood or start rotating now?? I supplement them with organic 1st year babyfood about 4 times per week right now since they aren't interested in the veggies.

btw.....I guess you noticed I didn't mention crickets. I feed dubia instead of crickets and they are gut loaded.

 

[Paradon]

Things like kale, parsley and carrots. I believe kale is supposed to be goitrogenic and not supposed to be used as the main staple for this reason and carrot is a little high in calcium oxalate, which binds with calcium and parsley barely have any nutrients if I'm not mistaken. These are the things I've been told to watch for when creating a diet for my iguana and bearded dragons. But you are right...everything in moderation is the key here. However, I take a whole different approach when it comes to moderation as described above. Thank you for the quick reply.

 

[ladyjustice33]

I use the nutrition chart at beautifuldragons.com when getting my fruits and veggies. If it is listed in green, I feed as a staple, black about once a week, and anything blue, yellow, or red pretty much never! Not that they ever eat it though, they hardly ever touch the nice veggies I painstakingly cut up for them every weekend and put in nice baggies to keep fresh for them for the week. :roll:

 

[LLLReptile]

Lady Justice - Since your beardies are full enough to ignore some foods now, you could probably start the food rotation now as well. Generally, I judge how often to feed things based on the animal's appetite. Younger beardies will often have a dish of mealworms left in their cage more often than once a week, or we will offer pelleted diets in addition to everything else, as the younger beardies do require more food in general than the adults do. Once their appetite tapers off, though, and they start getting picky, they stop getting the "special" treatment and go back to the regular feeding rotation like the rest. Sounds like you have a good balance on insect feeders, maybe taper off the frequency of feeding to help entice your beardies to eat their greens.

Paradon - It's actually an interesting topic, this thing with the goitrogens. I looked into it personally when debating types of greens to offer my blue tongues, as well as when deciding what to give the go-ahead to buy for feeding store animals. When researching what it was about these plants that made them so bad, it's that they have a *relatively* high amount of oxalic acid. Oxalic acid combines with calcium to create oxalates, essentially calcium salt. These salts have sharp edges, and theoretically can damage the kidneys and urinary tract. Spinach, for example, has about 1.7 grams of this oxalic acid per 100 grams of spinach according to one study I read. That's less than 2%, and that's what is relatively high - most other vegetables have even less. So, one or two leaves of spinach will result in such a minute quantity of oxalates that the effect is essentially negligible.

Goitrogens are so called because they interfere with the thyroid gland, which can lead to goiters in humans. In healthy humans, the effects of goitrogens are pretty much non existent because there are so many other nutritional benefits to eating the vegetables that have them. The same is true for reptiles. And again, think about just how much greens you are offering your animals - if you are feeding your beardie nothing but spinach, there's going to be more problems beyond just the calcium oxalate issues. The same claims about carrots, broccoli, all of that, all gets debunked in this same way.

As a company, we've found over the last 15 years that variety is an important aspect of keeping reptiles. If we only fed the animals parsley, we'd worry more about the exact nutritional content of parsley. As it is, it's typically included in the mix just for the sake of variety, and the smell entices stubborn feeders to eat. We buy different types of greens every time we go to the store, and keep in mind, this is only a snapshot of one week. Next week it'll be spring mix and anything else at the store that looks fresh and good, or maybe we'll just do the ZooMed canned diets, it all depends on what's available, what looks good, and what we have in the store. We have the ability to offer a wide variety of food items (we're being paid to be there for 8 hours, what better to do with the time?) so we do.

-Jen