Is our diet alright?

[EricL.]

Hello!
Since yesterday we are proud owners of a bearded dragon - and despite we did quite an amount of literature research, the feeding overwhelms us a bit.
Our little dragon is about 12-14cm (almost 5 inches) long and weighs 9grams. He should be around 2 months old.
We are feeding desert locusts, they are about as long as my girlfriends thumb is thick - and she has quite a normal thumb i would say.
Additionally, he got a little bit of dandelion or dasies in the morning - and there’s always some dandelion lying in is food bowl.
At the moment, we are planning on feeding him daily with one day without (living) food per week. In about two months we will reduce the food-days to around 4 days per week, while he will always have access to greens.

Is this suitable? We are absolutely unsure about the number of locusts per day.. we fed him two today and yesterday. Less or more?


Best wishes,

Eric, Kathrin and “Eddie”

 

[Gerald Smith]

I don’t know if I can answer specifically your questions but this is what I’ve learned as a new owner myself: “Generally when bearded dragons are very young, they eat 80% bugs and 20% plants.” As far as the number of insects I’m having a hard time trying to figure that out. Some people have said they can eat 100s a day “A healthy baby could eat as many as 50 small dubias in a day or as many as 200 small crickets(this can vary greatly from dragon to dragon).“ Some have said they are feeding theirs around 30. I have also read “baby dragons need lots of protien for growth. It is recommended that you let them eat as much as they can in a 15 minute sesion (3 times a day initially)”. Based on that my dragon is eating around 60 crickets a day. He scampers quickly to catch the first few and then he stops chasing them and eats the ones that happen to get close. I catch the remaining crickets and feed him by hand until he stops accepting them. Doing this he only eats 10-20 at a time. I hope he is having his fill and there’s nothing else that is causing him not to eat as many as he wants. Credit goes to BeardedHippy on this forum for the number and feeding schedule. I’m not an expert but I think your beardie needs quite a few more than 2 locusts a day.

 

[Leslie C]

I agree with Gerald. But we fed ours twice a day when he was a baby (weren't home during the day to give 3 feedings), giving him 5 small crickets at a time until he lost interest. Sometimes he only ate the 5 - sometimes he'd eat 15. We also fed some small worms (phoenix worms mostly - wax worms as a treat now and then), and dried worms. He loved those too. He barely touched his greens until he got a bit older - it was challenging. We put some worms in with the "salad" and he would get some when he went after the worms. Helped him learn they weren't so bad. They do need their diet to be mostly protein when young.

 

[JeanBD]

feed him some greens(not lettuce) kale, chard, arugula. they love those. and crickets would be their best main diet. and also, if the locusts are as big as your thumb, that is WAY to big. the food has to fit between the space between their eyes