Healthy weight vs Healthy appetite

[BeardedHippy]

Hi everyone, I just thought I would start up a discussion about dragon weight and appetite. I think everyone who owns a beardie will eventually be baffled by their dietry habits. When they are babies you think they will never stop eating, then all of a sudden their appetite disappears almost completely and you start to panic that they arent getting enough to eat. I have a male and a female, both a year old now and at the moment their eating habits are opposite to each other. The male used to have the biggest appetite, but went off his food a while back, he's lost a bit of weight but he still looks healthy. If I give him a superworm at the moment, he makes out like it tastes horrible and will only eat one, he normally loves them.
The female, however has a very healthy appetite, but sometimes I look at her fat little belly and wonder if thats just too much for a little lizard to be carrying around. How fat is too fat? when their bellies are scraping the floor? When you see pictures of beardies in the wild, they are generally on the leaner side. That makes sense I suppose, living in the outback they will be opportunist eaters, they might catch a mouse one day ,then nothing for the next several days, but that protien could last them for a week or more. Their wierd metabolisms allow them to do that, but living with us they have an all you can eat buffet. As such, appetite is not always the best indicator of health weather they eat a little or a lot.
Obviously, healthy weight is going to vary depending on length and age. Is there some ideal ratio, or formula to work it out?

 

[PatsyB]

Unhealthy weight is dragging on the floor. If they stand up and their belly touches the floor then they are overweight. It's always a visual thing though because weight will be distributed different in dragons of different lengths. You may have a 650g dragon but it's 22" long so it not fat, but when you see my 650g 15" dragon you realize what fat is! Appetite is a good indicator of health but we have to realize that we don't always have to feed them when they are hungry or we don't have to feed them as much as they want to eat. I have successfully gotten one of my dragons to lose extra weight by limiting the amount of protein they get to every 3 days and only a few bugs at a time. I think in the wild because they get food when they can find it and they are constantly on the move, they are going to be a bit leaner. My fat girl is fat because she has no motivation to move anywhere because she knows I'm going to bring her food. Now that I think about it, I feel like an enabler on "My 600 pound Life"!