Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My bearded dragon does not eat his veggie's and friuit... WHAT can i do to make him start to eat it with out forcing it..??????????? please help. !?

How old is your beardie, and what else are you feeding it? Also what kind of veggies are you offering? It's quite normal for young beardies to not be to interested in greens when they are being fed other live foods. Most young dragons if being raised on crickets, and other live foods will consume around 80% live foods and around 20% greens/veggies. I personally choose to offer mostly live foods to my babies and juveniles. For me it seems to work better, and they grow up large and healthy. Young dragons need the extra protein for growth. I offer greens daily for all ages though, and most young dragons do eat their greens as well as the live foods. It takes some getting used to for them. Try dropping the greens in piece by piece into their feeding dishes. Sometimes the movement triggers them too munch, and after a while they realize that the green stuff is food and not too bad either. For some juveniles who are big enough to take a few silk, wax, or meal worms I will drop them in with the greens and when they go to eat the worms they get some of the veggies as well. Most of my dragons by 6 months old are consuming almost equal parts of live & veggies daily. As dragons age to adults their bodies need less protein, and most will start to switch over to mostly greens on their own. It's always good, and for young dragons needed for proper health to supplement with a calcium and d3 powder daily. Rep-cal is a good brand or miner-all I. One or two feeding weekly should also be dusted with a multi vitamin like herptivite. Just offer greens daily, and try some of the tricks to get them to taste them most likely they will start to eat it on there own without forcing. Forcing them to eat it will mostly do more harm then good. As long as they are eating food I would not force them.
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Mystical Dragons

Thanx for the help!! --- my beardie is about 7 inches long with the tail, still small! the space between the eyes is about 1/2 inch. I am feeding my beardie 6 or 5, two week old crickets each day. I am also offering some mixed frozen veggie's and kale, either choped up (in a veggie chopper) really, really small almost like mush but still whole,or chopped by hand with a knife , alot larger. and some apple sauce (which if i put some on his mouth will lick off, likes more than anything same with tamatoes that i some times offer.) or whole small peices of apple. sometimes some blueberry juice or the blue berry (but just licks the juice out)also I'm not sure how old he is but I just got him like a week and a half ago. please reply telling me you got this message and any other suggestions you have.THANKYOU ALOT!!