Reptile & Amphibian Forums

What is the best way to get a Bearded on dry food diet? My dragon is only 2 months old but I want to get him on dry food early. I have tried the "vibrating dish" with no luck. He eats some of it if i leave him with it and dont offer any crickets for a day but he doesnt eat very much. Any good methods?

Personally I don't think offering an 'all dry' pellet diet is the best way to go. As they are 'dry' it means alot of the moisture a dragon would normal get from fresh greens and insects will be missing in his diet. Though soaking once or twice a week can help encourage them to drink, not all dragons will even drink from a bath or even a water dish left in the cage.

Most dragons will drink when water is given to them via an eye dropper or similar method but this does get tedious to have to do every day to ensure adequate hydration.

Pellets certainly can be a great addition to a dragon's diet, if served sprinkled on fresh greens but in my view, offering just pellets should only be a method used if fresh greens and insects are extremely hard to come by in your area. Though with so many online stores, its very easy to order seeds and grow your own fresh greens (ie mustard greens, collard greens, etc can easily be bought in seed form and a small 'garden' grown in a corner of one's home or basement. Or even outside if you have a normal garden, or just in a long flower pot.)

Though I can't remember the actual brand name, the multicolored pebble like pellets seem to be eaten more readily by dragons, either stimulated by the colors or smell of them. I definitely know the plain greenish 'rabbit pellets' like dry food are not accepted by my dragons at all. Though when soaked in a bit of water, they make a great cricket food.

For baby dragons such as you have, its best to just feed appropriate sized well gut loaded crickets. Crickets are the cheapest and easily obtained food source for fast growing baby dragons. That and some fresh greens to get them started on eating greens early.

I have also tried other forms of processed foods with my dragon and skinks, but none are eaten with the same enthusiasm as fresh greens. The canned insects are more easily accepted though but given the cost of a single can, its cheaper to buy live insects.
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PHLdyPayne

Yeah he seems to eat the greens and he loves crickets but I just wanted to get him on the pellets maybe half of the time. and I was soaking them in water to help with hydration and making it a little easier for him to get them down. He just doesnt have any interest in the pellets at all.

Hi: Although not developed specifically for BDs, Mazuri (which I consider to be a higher-quality animal food manufacturer than Zoomed, etc.) makes pellets for insectivores. While not cheap, I think it's quite likely that they come out to be less expensive than those little bottles of colored pellets you can get from a pet store because you can buy them in bulk. (Beautiful Dragons sells it by the pound.)

I use a blender to grind them down to a coarse dust-like consistency, and then sprinkle it on top of my BDs' daily salads along with any supplements I'm giving that day. Then I spray a little water on top to stick it all to the greens. My BDs all love salad and have accepted the pellets well in this form.

I do still feed crix, phoenix worms, roaches, etc., but this allows me to supplement the live feeders. The Mazuri pellets can also be used to gutload insects.

I agree with the other poster that pellets alone wouldn't be an adequate diet for BDs. Crix are cheap enough to order by the 1,000 and easy to maintain as you feed them off, and in addition to adding variety to the diet, they are very stimulating/enriching to my guys. I think they'd be incredibly bored without their regular bug-chasing frenzies.

Good luck!