Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I bought an adult bearded dragon over a year ago, at the time she was extremely orange. The owner told me it was because he fed her a lot of carrots, but I didn't believe him. I have since raised her under the best lighting and even take her outside when it's nice for natural light but she has lost almost all her color. I don't feed her carrots as I have heard they can be harmful if given to much. Anyone else have any experience with this?

I'm curious about this too. I feed my normal carrots (he loves them and will dig thru everything to get to them) and he has gotten more orange to him as he has grown.

I've backed way off the carrots as well, though they really seem to love them. I really like the nutritional chart on beautifuldragons.com and they recommended rarely feeding carrots. I'm curious as to why though. I understand about spinach and several others, but with carrots is it the vitamin A or something else?

Chip

Here's an old post from T.B., who explained about carrots and the Vitamin A toxicity myth..
carrots/vitamin A

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TheClassyLizard

Yes, it is a fact (small scale experiments done to prove this) that the beta-carotene in carrots does help britten reptiles color. You can directly feed carrots to beardies and gutload crix and mealworms for beadies and a number of other lizards.

As far as I know, and have read Carrots do help in keeping color. It will not turn an animal that doesn't have it in the genes orange though. Many other veggies can be used for this Carrots is one, an other is sweet potato, and butternut squash. Mostly veggies that are yellow, and orange in color. In one of the bearded dragon books I beleive it to be the Bearded Dragon Manual gives reference to Flamingos at a zoo that lost the pink color. They relized that the animals were not being fed food that they ate in the wild, it was beta Carrotine(sp)that was missing. After changing the diet to a more natural food for flamigos they regained the pink color. I do feed my dragons about two servings a week with sweet potato, and squash on top of there veggies. Two of the dragons I bought for color still have there orange, and yellow full body color. A normal that I feed the same diet does not show any more of these colors then any other normal. So I think the dragon has to have these colors to begin with.

We have used paprika on our horses before, which really does work, but I have not tried it on bds. Most of their color is genetics and the rest is environmental and dietary. I would say to give it a try and see if it makes any difference.

Hi
i have a book a happy healthy pet from steve grenard.
there is a part abouth betacarote.
it does turn more color in pigment of youre beardie.
same as whe drink carot juice and go in the sun whe get more brown then.
they say veggie and fruit who contain red,yellow,and orange have betacaroten in them and with the uvb/uva lighting and the nice genes of the animal he can turn intom a great colorful pet.
i also have seen bearide who look normal and after 2,3 month uvb under a reptisun 5.0 they got more color.
the flamingo thing is right i have heard it to because the zoo gave them no pink scrimps the flamingo color vaint away and then after they gave back scrimpms on menu the flamingo got more color in them.
i also know in singing birds they also give betacaroten to give more red in the bird but i dont like artificial colorthings i think yellow ,orange and red veggie r greens is a better way.
byeeeeee

IT is a fact that carrots will enhance and cause a orange hue to appear on those that consume large amounts of it. The betacarotine in the carrot is what causes this coloration. If you have ever been to any Zoos or amusment parks where they keep Flamingos, Scarlet Ibis, or Roseate Spoonbills (all pink birds) that is an excellent example. The birds get the pink color naturally from the crustaceans they normally eat in the wild. In captivity it would be to expensive to bring in the shrimps in to obtain these colors. The keepers used to feed a large amounts of both carrot and paprika mixed in thier diets to enhance the colors. Now they just use a mixture of chemicals which is much cheaper and has a more intense color on the birds than is even produced in the wild. Another example is a friend of mines baby used to just love carrots and wouldn't want to eat much more. Sure enough if that baby wasn't brighter than any Orange Glow beardie I've seen lol. So it isn't unreasonable at all to assume the same affect would occur with Beardies. Just a thought..... Mike B.
Mother Gecko- Reptiles

I believe the only down side of feeding beardies too many carrots is that it can give then very runny poo. Other than that, they are fine to feed in small amounts regularly. Some shredded carrots are good on top of the salad.

Carrots also are very helpful in enhancing colour as explained by others already.