Won't Eat in the Morning

[ClydesGirl]

Okay, I have had Clyde for almost 3 months now. Every day I have fed him crickets in the morning, about an hour and a half after lights on, in a separate feeding bin. Then I would give him fresh salad at lunch time and just leave it in his viv until the next day (add water to it to keep it fresh). Then I fed him crickets again as soon as I got home from work, about 3 hours before lights out. He always ate his crickets very enthusiastically. He was eating about 150-200 per day.

Today, for the third morning in a row, he refused to eat a single cricket at his morning feeding. I put him in the feeding bin with the crickets and he just sits there, lets the crickets crawl all over him, eventually gets annoyed by them, and starts glass-dancing for me to let him out. The first day this happened (Tuesday), I chalked it up to the fact his nose and mouth were shedding. He's always weird when parts of his head shed, though this was the first time he'd refused food. When I got home from work on Tuesday and tried to feed him his evening crickets, he happily gobbled up 91 of them, as if he was back to normal. However, yesterday morning, same drill. He refused to eat a single cricket in the morning. At that point his nose and mouth were done shedding but his tail and a couple of his legs were still shedding. When I got home from work last night, he ate 103 crickets.

This morning, the exact same thing. Would not eat his crickets. He's done shedding except for his front right leg, which is whitish now, but hasn't even started to shed. I gave him fresh salad at lunch and he ate a couple bites. He seems to be eating the same amount of salad as usual, if not a bit more. I'm fairly confident he will eat his crickets when I get home this evening as well. But why would he suddenly refuse to eat in the mornings?

 

[ATLBeardedDragons]

Sometimes during growth spurts or shedding they wont eat as much... Sometimes they just go on a feeding STRIKE for no apparrent reason. What size is your beardie??? And how big are the crickets are you feeding him? Thats alot of crickets!!!!! YOU MAY WANT TO UP THE SIZE A 1/4'' from what they currently are....

P.S. if he is eating 103 the last thing you should be is "worried"

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www.AtlantaBeardedDragons.com

sincerely,
ABD

 

[ClydesGirl]

Last time I measured him, he was 14", but that was before this shed, so he's probably a bit bigger now. I oredered crickets from ReptileFood.com for the first time, since Ghann's has been out of stock lately and I wasn't sure how big their crickets ran, so I erred on the small side. Since, before that I had tried ordering "half inch" crickets from Flukers and they ended up being HUGE, I measured them and the smallest were 5/8" and the largest were full grown. So, ordering from a new place, this time I wanted to make sure I got something he could eat safely. ReptileFood calls these "2/3 inch". They seem like a good size for him. Anything much bigger would be pushing the whole "space between his eyes" limit. I might be able to go up one size.

And yeah, I'm not worried that he's not eating enough. Like I said, he eats his evening crickets and nibbles on his salad, so I know he's not starving. I'm more just worried about the abrupt change in routine.