Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi all. I have a 6 month BD (about 8-10 inches TL). When I bought him (or her) from the pet store, the dude there told me that it ate mostly mealworms and crickets, and not much salad. I brought it home and I've given it salad every day (Collard greens, Romaine lettuce, and shred carrots mix).....I haven't seen it touch that stuff. I've also tried giving it pellets (Brand name Kaytee, I don't know if it's for juvies, adults, or both)....I'm assuming both ages since it doesn't label it on the bottle. Anyways, I've tried giving pellets to the BD in the salad, but since he doesn't touch the salad, it makes it pretty hard to eat the pellets too! I've tried watering down the pellets to make them softer, etc....still no luck. All he eats are mealworms and crickets (about 5 mealworms a day, and about a little less than a dozen crickets a day)....I want to break him of this habit, but it's not going well.......HELP!!! Any advice, secrets, etc...to break a BD out of a feeding habit and getting them to eat pellets, etc?????

Thanks!

tool_u2@yahoo.com

I think most people will tell you to switch to RepCal pellets, they seem to be more accepted by BD's. Also are you talking about mealworms (small ones) or Superworms (really big meal worms). If you're just feeding mealworms (which I won't get into, but someone else no doubt will) 5 mealworms and 12 crickets isn't very much food for a 6 month old. Most dragons that age could eat 50 crickets in 10 mins. Anyways, what you could try is offering salad everyday (just leave it in the corner) and cut out the live food for a couple of days. This tends to break the habits of stubborn beardies. After 2 or 3 days they'll get hungry and go for the salad (btw at least until you get them to eat the salad you may want to leave out the pellets, getting them to eat pellets can be just as difficult as getting them to eat salad. It's up to you if you want to try doing both at once. But I suppose it may be easier if they've never had a salad WITHOUT pellets.) Also since you are still offering salad it's not like your starving them. But if after several days they still don't want to eat it, you may want to go back to live food. Well that's my opinon, I'm sure others will chime in soon to tell you what they think.

They're just the regular sized mealworms, not supers. He's still a little to small for the supers. I know 5 mealworms and 12 crix a day is not a lot, but I leave the salad in his tank 24/7 and there's always at least 7 or 8 mealworms in his tank at all times that I keep in there.....I also drop about 2 dozen crickets in there a day.....he just doesn't eat that much.......I always have excess at the end of the day. He's a little timid around people......he never eats if he knows someone is watching....and he likes to run from us.......I don't know if that has anything to do with him not eating properly.....but it doesn't look like he's lost any weight

The previous post is correct. While having mealworms (IMO, he shouldn't have them daily) all the time, he's not going to try salad.
Initially, you could put the salad in the tank in the morning and try feeding crickets in the late afternoon. If that doesn't work, you could try a day or two w/o prey, but he's still young so I wouldn't go longer.
Even though I have had some stubborn green eaters, they always end up eating them eventually.

For one of mine, I put greens, pellets and water in a blender so it could go through a eyedropper and got him to drink from the dropper.
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TheClassyLizard