Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have a very good field behind my house that is full of dandilion and other native plants and flowers in the spring and summer. But I also have lots of mulberry trees. I feed the leaves to my beardies and to the silkworms that I raise for the beardies. I have read through Deer Fern Farms website, and they don't mention mulberry leaves for uros. Does anyone know if they are a good green for uros?

Thanks.

i have read they were good-fed some last summer. they don't eat that many but they stay nice and firm all day, seemed they like them dried out better,though.how about the beardies?

Thanks! I contacted Doug Dix, and he said they are fine for uros if they will eat them. I guess the key is to get them to eat them by mistake! LOL! The beardies vary. Some will eat them avidly and some won't, but I have really healthy silkworms when I feed the leaves as opposed to the chow. The beardies can also benefit from the dandelion leaves and flowers, and there seem to be other common native plants between the uros and beardies.

I now have two malis. The second just came today, is an adult male, and is beautiful. So I went out to the field behind the house to pick dandelions, and the field is in full spring mode! I grabbed some flowers, dandelion, and another purple one that is on the Deer Fern Farms page.

Now, how about sunflowers and their leaves? I toss my "used" bird seed from my parrots out for the wild bids, and have a small crop of "seed" plants, like sunflower, safflower, sweet grass, etc. Are these greens good?

He is very tame, and very dark. Beautiful.

sunflower seeds are ok if hulled and i have mixed in "sunflower greens" with the salad before(these were store bought and looked like sprouts). I have also read various species of grass can be fed. which ones are most desirable/undesirable i cannot really say. i have also mixed in wheat grass before. of these items i would say the wheat grass went over best-moreso with my young egyptians than with my mali's. these were also OCCASIONAL items mixed in with the staples for spring/summer. I would think sweet grass could be good for mixing in but i can't really say for sure. not sure about safflower.

I know that its probably a mistake to some degree to think that if a seed is okay, then the plant should be. I can say that I rehab baby wild rabbits, and I can feed just about all of the bird seed sprouts and plants to them. Since I know they aren't toxic, I guess I can explore. My staples will of course be the bok choy, endive, escarole, collards, mustard, and turnip, and the dandelion, right? I find that changing up the salad works pretty well for the beardies.

My big Mali enjoys birch, maple and beech leaves.

yeah I had the same "philosophy" about the seeds vs. plants,which is why I only mixed in a few of the sunflower sprouts.(not a big favorite anyway-neither were the seeds) I never attempted to feed the actual sunflower petals or mature greens for fear of the unknown.squash flowers, especially the "pollen"(the orange piece in the middle-is that what it is called?) were a hit in late summer for a hand fed treat. mustards should be fed only sparingly, as so the turnips. collards would be fed sparingly, if at all, as i understand it so i don't bother with it.radiccio is good,too. watercress, small stems included, goes over well. they also like some parsley mixed in.you can also mix in rosemary. dill, i have read, is ok but they don't eat it and it makes the cage smell like a big pickle. these are all things i have read about and use to "spice" up the salad for them. alfalfa sprouts are good. you can crush pelleted food and dust the salad with it. you can grind up timothy and alfalfa hay,cubes,or pellets.flowers,beans,seeds, and bee pollen,(you know already) can't think of anything else.

WOW! Deer Fern Farms and all the other care sheets that I've read recommend the mustard, turnip and collard greens as staples. Those are staples for beardies. What is the problem with those greens? I know that spinach is a rarely because of the calcium binding issue, but the three that I mention don't have that effect. Can anyone explain why these are not good staple greens? Obviously there are very mixed opinions about them!

actually deerfernfarms says "go easy" on collards... I read something to do with the mustard oil in mustard greens makes it a moderate use food item... and I can't recall why but somewhere I read turnips should be used in moderation,but elsewhere they are listed as staples. some people don't recommend collards at all.collards can bind some minerals according to deerfern and some say they are altogether a bad choice.(between that and how my uros did not seem to like them much I do not bother). maybe moderately is a better term than sparingly.given the choice of staple and moderate- I choose to go with moderate.I guess sparingly was a poor word choice that should be reserved for animal protein and such.

Well, my beardies are getting tired of them anyway. I think I will pu the spring mix and add native plants since I have so much of them out there! Thats free salad! LOL! The dandelion and grasses die off toward late summer if we have dry conditions, but that hasn't been the case for the past two years.

The only thing I don't like about getting the spring mix is having to remove the spinach. I feed 10 lizards give or take, 40 birds give or take, two rabbits, two cats, and one Momma. Its so much easier when at least some of the groups eat the same! LOL!