Stephanie's Page on Diet
Bearded dragons are often referred to as omnivores, meaning they eat both
vegetable and animak matter. They are also herbivores (vegetable eaters),
carnivores (meat eaters), foliovorous (leaf eaters), frugivorous (fruit
eaters), and insectivorous (insect eaters). They will eat a wide variety of
foods, which is partly what makes beardies easy to care for. Like people,
beardies need variety. You should feed your beardies vegetables twice a day,
and insects once. Some people have different views on that, but basically in
the wild they will eat a lot of leaves. As babies, to about 4 months of
age, be careful to not overfeed them. True, babies grow rapidly at this
stage and it is better to feed them several small meals a day, rather than
one or two big meals. When offering crickets, make sure you get pinhead
crickets. If the prey item is too large, your baby beardie may suffer an
impaction, which puts pressure on the nerves, resulting in temporary or
permanent damage to theit back legs. In general, the crickets need to be
about the size of the space between their eyes. Offer vegetables a few
times a day. They may not eat them at first, but will eventually. If you
want to offer larvae as part of their diet, you might want to get a few
waxworms instead of mealworms. Waxworms are softer and will be easier for
your baby to digest.
Vegetables that are offered should include dark leafy greens as the bulk of
the veggies. Collard greens, mustard greens, kale, dandelion greens are all
good. Iceburg lettuce is a NO-NO!! That lettuce has no nutritional value and
will cause diarhea if fed to your beardies. Spinach should be used
SPARINGLY. Spinach has a lot of phosphorous which can block calcium
absorption. Other vegetables that are usually offered include, yellow
squash, zucchini, green, red, or yellow bell peppers, peas, green beans,
cooked corn, bok choy, carrots, and cucumbers. Beardies also like fruits and
should be offered occassionally as treats. Bananas rank #1 but also have
phosphorous. Apples, cantaloupe, strawberries, mangos, and grapes are well
liked to a beardie. As beardies become adults, you can feed them bigger
crickets two or three times a week bit offer veggies every day. You will
need to give a calcium supplement to your beardies for proper bone growth.
Every other day, dust crickets with Rep-Cal or other phosphorous free
calcium powder. Offer water in a small bowl every day. Most beardies won't
drink standing water but I keep a small bowl in the tanks anyway. I also
mist water on my beardies once a day. They will lick the water off their
nose. If you keep plants in the tank, you can mist the leaves, giving a
similar set up like they have in the wild for finding water. They will lick
the water off the leaves.
