Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Since my dragon is about 3 months old ( app. 8 in and 30 grams) I decided this past weekend to get him some small meal worms to eat to vary his diet. He lapped them up greedily. He even will eat the packaged kind where he would not touch preprocessed crickets. However at the begining of this week I noticed he would not touch many of his crickets. Since he was shedding I thought it was related. However introducing live meal worms today caused him to snatch them right up, it seems that he is just now sticking his nose up at crickets. Has anyone ever changed their feeder food only to find the Dragon now prefers it to anything else. What if anything can you gut load a meal worm with?

First off, I never feed mealworms to any of my dragons (14) especially not dragons as small as yours. There is just too much chitin shell and very little meat. Fed in quantity they are an impaction risk.

That being said, I am having a similar problem with one of mine. My smallest baby hatched on 8/8/07 is 11" and 60 grams while his siblings are about 16" and 200 grams. I have been feeding him silkworms in addition to his crickets for some time now since he has always been a sluggish eater. Now he refuses the crickets and waits for silkworms. Personally I like the variety issue but as far as nutrition, ease of care and cost effectiveness crickets are the best feeders for small dragons. Silkworms are great, easy, and cost effective since I breed them myself. But, the down side is they only eat one kind of food. A good cricket gutload is more nutritious.

I guess you and I will have to try offering nothing but crickets for a while, but in your case it is probably more urgent that you do so.

You can buy nutritious worm bedding at cricketfood.com. I buy the advanced for my superworm colony.