Feeding bearded dragon the right way is important to make sure that your pet dragon is healthy.
A lot of health issues can be prevented by providing the proper diet for them. For this reason, understand the diet for them in the wild is vital. In nature, they are omnivores and eat variety of food such as crickets and vegetables. In captivity, the range of food should be wide to meet the nutritional requirements required by the animal.
It is not complicated to feed the bearded dragon. Just the basic feeding methods that need to learn and proper nutrition food should be prepared for different stages of their life. There is no specific amount of food to be fed to the reptile. However, in general, the metabolism of bearded dragons is considered high; you should monitor and judge how much food is your pet need. Food consumption may vary with the age of bearded dragons.
Feeding baby bearded dragon
Baby dragons should be fed with small crickets 2 to 3 times a day. Relatively large crickets may cause impactions and paralysis to the bearded dragon. The crickets should be one third of the hatchling’s head.
Sometimes it is hard to find the small size crickets at the pet shops, especially during winter season. It is to learn to breed your own crickets as it is always cleaner and there are always young crickets available. Crickets Breeding Made Simple is a good book with step-by-step guide if you want to learn how to breed.
Basically, large amount of crickets is required for each feeding as long as they can finish it within 10 minutes. It is important to dust the crickets with calcium and vitamin supplements once a day. They need more calcium because they are growing rapidly. Besides, vegetables should be provided as daily diet as complimented food.
Mealworms are not recommended for baby bearded dragon due to the hard chitnous shell.
Juvenile dragon
Juveniles can be considered as the sub-adult bearded dragons. Feeding is much more easy. Cricket feeding should be 2 to 3 times daily. Make sure that the crickets size is less than distance between their eyes.
Similar to the hatchings, calcium and vitamin supplements are need every day as they are growing rapidly. Mealworms and waxworms can be introduced as second source of main diet. Every juveniles need daily vegetables feeding as well.
Adult bearded dragons feeding
Daily feeding is required for adult dragons. They are active during the day and require large quantity of food feeding. Try not to feed the large prey that is too large for your pet.
Vegetables is needed for adult dragon daily. They seems love to eat more vegetation when they are getting older. The amount of vegetation offered should be at least half of the food offered to them.
For bearded dragons on different stage of their life, there are different kinds of requirements on their food to make sure that they are living healthily.
