Reptile & Amphibian Forums

How much should a 2 year old female bearded Dragon be eating and weigh?

I haven't weighed her yet but as soon as I do I will put that info up here but as eating goes...

She gets 48 large crickets a week and it takes her quite awhile to finish them so I figured that was enough. She also gets salad made up of Lettuce, Carrots, Collard Greens and sometimes there is Broccoli she also gets one large mouse a month as a treat
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Brenna Rector
www.brennaspets.com

0.1.0 Bearded Dragon
1.2.0 Ball Pythons
0.2.0 Dogs
1.1.0 Cats
1.2.0 Ferrets
1.0.0 Gerbils
0.1.2 Bunnies

Be careful with broccoli this interferes with production of tyhyroid hormones which would cause problems for your beardie you should not feed broccoli too often to your beardie. Also I hope by large mouse you meant pinky which wouldn't be a large mouse. I think they say pinky and sometimes a little older than that but not a large mouse. I have read that a large adult beardie can take a large mouse but for the risks its not worth it. They can get bit from the mouse or suffer other problems when trying to consume it. For me the best times to feed a beardie a pinky would be during a females clutch mostly after to help gain back some of the weight that was lost. Really your food source should be 50/50 live food and veggies. If you get weights and a couple pictures up that helps a lot to tell how your beardie is doing.

A 2 year old dragon not producing any eggs should be getting 80-90% of her diet salad. 48 crickets a week and a large mouse is too much. Reduce crickets to maybe a 12-20 large crickets a week and skip the mouse completely. Even a pinky mouse isn't good more than once a month as a rare treat.

As for your salad, ice berg lettuce is useless and too much carrots and broccoli isn't good either. The collard greens are fine but I suggest adding dandelion greens, mustard greens, turnup greens, endive, escaroli and other calcium rich greens with only a small portion (maybe 20% of greens) of vegetables daily. Use as much variety as possible and rotate green/vegetable types weekly as they are available. FOr a more complete list of healthy greens to feed a dragon check out:

www.beautifuldragons.com
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PHLdyPayne

You need a weight scale that measures in one gram increments. 48 crickets a week is only about 7 a day which is fine. There isn't much to weight to crickets. With a weight scale you can adjust the live food to keep her at a stable weight. As far as how much she should weigh? That depends on the dragon. I have 700 gram females and 400 gram females.

I weighed her today and she was 449 grams and I will cut back on the crickets and the mouse and I don't ever feed her Iceberg(we don't ever buy it because of the pointlessness) and I will introduce different veggies

Thanks so much for the advice
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Brenna Rector
www.brennaspets.com

0.1.0 Bearded Dragon
1.2.0 Ball Pythons
0.2.0 Dogs
1.1.0 Cats
1.2.0 Ferrets
1.0.0 Gerbils
0.1.2 Bunnies

You didn't mention how long your female is. I feed most of my full adults 500-700 grams 8 superworms every other day plus about one-two hornworms a week, to maintain their weight.

http://www.greatlakeshornworm.com/

The web address above has a great weight comparison between bugs. 8 supers every other day is 28 supers a week which is the same weight as 50 crickets. Even not including the Hornworm or two you are feeding less. Plus 450 is pretty light unless she's small. My small adult females are 500 or a little more. My large females are 700 .