When to switch over from 80% bugs to 80% veggies?

[n3wport]

I have no idea of my bearded dragons age,
He is not full grown but getting close to it..

He has lost alot of interest in his salad, I am wondering if I should start the 'tough love' approach and stop offering so many crickets / superworms so he will go for his salad!

He is about 17-18 inches if that helps..

He eats a hand full of superworms and a few crickets twice a day, his salad is available to him all day! He snacks on it, but would rather the bugs!

How do you transition from 80 % bugs to 80% salad? Is it a gradual thing? For some reason I cannot find much on google about it!

 

[Toasty]

I would say that yes, ideally you want it to be more of a gradual transition, doing it this way is more "natural" and is going to be less stressful on you and your beardie than going "cold turkey". Since he is at least snacking on the salad, thats already a great start. You could try and start adding more variety to the salad too, rotating several different kinds of greens and veggies to make it more interesting. Start keeping track of how many superworms and crickets you are actually offering, and very gradually start reducing the number, maybe just by one superworm or one cricket every few days or even a week. Try offering the live prey later in the day to encourage him to eat more salad first. Hopefully the amount of salad he eats will increase as the amount of live prey is slowly decreased. The goal is for him to eat enough salad and live prey to maintain a healthy weight. The 80:20 ratio doesn't have to be exact, its more of a rough guideline, don't worry too much about trying to make sure there is an exact balance.

 

[morphmom]

My adult gets 3-5 feeder insects a day. I keep it around 25 a week. Some people feed bugs every other day but they still need the protien. My 'Second Chance Dragon' Myah, is very small because her 1st family offered only one super a day with salad. It took a very long time to get her to a healthy weight and even longer to get her to mess everyday as it was hard for her to pass anything. We're back on track thanks to this site. My little one (almost 2) looks great at 317 grams