What To Feed A Bearded Dragon? Better Be Careful

What To Feed A Bearded DragonSo the question is: What to feed a bearded dragon? Well, what do you think to feed a dragon? Humans of course! Don´t you have an annoying neighbor or a stupid boss you would love to sacrifice to the dragon? Lol, don´t worry I am just kidding.

Beardies might look like dragons, but in fact, they are always calm and relaxed and won´t spit fire if they are angry at you.

What you are going to learn in this article

Our these loveable little wanna-be dragons have to eat something. In this article, I am going to show you

  • what a healthy bearded dragon diet looks like and how often you should feed your dragon.
  • Further, I am going to tell you what makes the difference between feeding an adult bearded dragon and feeding a baby bearded dragon.
  • tips on supplementing and gut loading
  • At the end of this article, I´ll give you a few recommendations where you can order your bearded dragon food online.

Hope you enjoy this article!

What do bearded dragons eat?

A lot of people like reptiles and want to have one, but when they see what those reptiles eat, they immediately don´t want to have a reptile anymore.

So, if you are such a person who does not like feeding insects, spiders, or little mammals (I understand that, don´t worry), I have some good news for you. Adult bearded dragons should eat vegetables most of the time.

Adult bearded dragon diet

If you have an adult bearded dragon or if you want to get one, you should feed your dragon live food two to three times per week. 6 times per week bearded dragons should eat vegetables.

No food one day per week!

A lot of people do not do that, but I only feed 6 days a week. 1 day a week my beardies get nothing except water of course. In my opinion, this is more natural and my dragons are very healthy.

Beardies can get fat quickly and that can cause damage to the liver and kidneys. I think I do not have to say that your beardies can die from that.

Small mammals can be feed once in a while, but you do not have to do that. I would not feed small mammals more than once in 3 months.

Diet of a 6 months old beardie

I usually switch the diet when my beardies get 6 months old. Before they got live food every day, but after six months I think it is time to feed a little less of crickets, etc.

You should feed live food four times a week now. Vegetables should still be offered every day.

Please note that it always depends on your dragon’s size and state of health. If you get a dragon that is underfed or sick, of course, you have to feed it more live food for more energy. Please do not get me wrong here.

Diet of a baby bearded dragon

Even if they are very small, baby bearded dragons eat the most. You should offer live food every day.

Besides that, you should also feed vegetables, although the babies will most probably not eat much of that.

What kind of live food?
bearded dragon diet

I mostly feed crickets and locusts.

Once in a while, my beardies get mealworms or super worms. However, I use that more as a treat. You should not feed those worms too often since your beardies will get fat quickly from that.

What kind of vegetables?

You can find a list of vegetables and live food you can feed your beardie here. If you click this link, it will open in a new tab, so you can continue to read this article.

How much should you feed?

It is not easy to say that without seeing the animal, as I already said above it depends on the size of your dragon and on the state of health.

Baby bearded dragons should eat as much as they want. You only should make sure that you don´t feed too many mealworms.

6 months old beardies should eat less than babies. I feed 4 to 5 crickets four times a week.

Adult dragons get 3 big crickets three times a week.

However, these are just vague numbers. But you can take this as a rule of thumb:

Never feed your bearded dragon so much, that it is full. That sounds a little bit weird and maybe cruel, but it really is not. You want to make sure that you do not overfeed your pet.

Supplementation and gut-loading

If you buy live food for your reptile, most of the time the live food is already gut-loaded.

What does that mean?

It means that the insects were fed with fruits or vegetables. Why?

Well let me explain:

The insects you feed your bearded dragon are a bus and all the vitamins of the fruits and vegetables get into the insect-bus. Next stop Bearded Dragon Stomach City.

The result? A healthy and happy beardie.

(That part with the insect-bus was really weird…whatever lol)

No matter if the food you´ve bought was already gut-loaded, you should always feed the insects with salad, vegetables or fruits before feeding your beardie.

Supplementation

You should always offer a source of calcium.

You should dust the crickets you feed with vitamin supplements 2 times a week. Be very careful, you do not want to use supplements more often since that can cause poisoning. A lot of bearded dragons die from poisoning.

Where to order bearded dragon food?

bearded dragon foodI was pretty surprised to see that you can get live food for reptiles at Amazon. First I thought that the quality can´t be good there, but according to the reviews on Amazon, they offer a great service.

After seeing this I have tried it myself and ordered some crickets and locusts for my beardies and I have to say that the quality instead was great. Only a few of them were dead, which is absolutely normal.

I don´t know what you think, but I find it a little bit annoying to always run to the next pet shop, I rather order my beardie food online.

Further not all pet shops have live food for reptiles. Amazon even has hornworms, which are an awesome treat for bearded dragons, since the like them very much.

Get Your Bearded Dragon Food Here At Amazon!

You could also order your food from petco, but they only send huge quantities and I do not like that. 1000 crickets per order are too much for me. However, it is okay if you have a lot of reptiles at home.

So now you know what to feed a bearded dragon!

Do you have any questions? Leave them in the comment section, I will get back to you quickly!

What do you feed your bearded dragon? Do you have any additional tips for a bearded dragon diet? Leave your tips in the comment section below so we can help bearded dragon lovers together 🙂

All the best,

Pierre

6 Comments

  1. Amber September 27, 2016
    • Pierre September 28, 2016
  2. Mandy October 13, 2016
    • Pierre October 13, 2016
  3. Jeannette February 12, 2020
    • Pierre February 13, 2020

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