wont eat crickets

[alrha]

Puff eats his worms fine, and veggies when i hand feed it to him (peel back side lip and stick it in) but when i put him in a container with crickets, he doesnt care for them at all.
anyway to entice him to try some crickets?

 

[BeardieGrandma]

I got my baby (2.5 mos old) and he had been raised on dubais. When I put him in a separate bin to feed him crickets he didn't want any part of it. I worried that he needed to eat them (didn't have any dubais), so I handfed him for a day or so, holding tiny crickets in my fingers, which he ate pretty well. I figured out that if I lived life this way it would be a huge pain in the butt (I pictured him on my arm two feet long slurping crickets out of my fingers one at a time when he was full grown) so we had to stop the handfeeding pretty quickly. That did go a long way to make friends with him quickly though.

I cruised this site and others and learned that they 'freak' a little if you put them in a bin with a bunch of crickets. So I put a towel down in the plastic bin to make him more comfortable and tried again, this time one cricket at a time. Worked like a charm. I would shake one at a time out of a plastic sandwich baggie (cause they get dusted in the AM) and give him a chance to eat them up. Then I gave him 3 at a time. He mows them down like a vacuum cleaner now (took about a week of babying him at it).

To add a little variety to his diet, I ordered phoenix worms for him as well. So I have 400 phoenix worms, thinking this will last me a couple of weeks, and he puts his nose up and won't eat them. Crap. So I waited until he was good and hungry and found a particulary squirmy one, dropped it in front of him in his tank, and he ate it. Four days of eating 3 worms at a time, now he's up to 10 or so twice a day, with the balance of his appetite sated with crickets and veggies. He's my first beardie, so I've been all paranoid about eating, pooping, temperature, lighting, handling, breathing, hydration, diseases, substrate, etc. - my husband complained that I'm obsessed and the children are complaining that I love the lizard more than them . I told them he's the new baby of the house and needs more attention, they can go make their own dinner.

 

[alrha]

ha ha, thats great. tell the kids if they want you to hand feed them crickets and worms they should just line up - lol.

thanks for the advise. i think worms are a lot easier and he is eating them well, so i prefer to keep them as the staple. but i would like him to eat some crickets too so he doesnt get picky. will try just giving him one and see how he does.

 

[JT24]

I am not sure how old PUFF is , but , through my personal experience of raising and breeding dragons , as babies as well as juvies they are intimidated by crickets that are really too big for them. In their mind if they are smaller , they are food. So , what I have done is to go down maybe a size or 2 from the current size you are using. I generally would skip a day of feeding insects , just so I know that they are going to have a bigger appettite and usually this way has worked successfullly for me.
Another feeder that works 100% of the time for me is dubia roaches , they can be dusted just like crickets and have a better nutritunial value than crickets. The only drawback is that they are a bit pricey , but , well worth it if you decide to establish your own colony.
Hope this helps

 

[alrha]

Puff is just under 7". and am feeding 1/4" crickets.
he just started eating them this am (gave him one at a time) and he ate 7 of them with much gusto.