Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have read in tons of places that hand feeding your beardie worms, crix etc is a great way to help tame your beardie and get them used to you. Do you really want to associate your hand with food? Could this cause aggressiveness later between you and your beardie? I know with corn snakes you don't want your hand to be connected with food...is it the same with BDs? If it is good to hand feed BDs what could potentially cause your BD to become aggressive? Just trying to figure out the best way to get to know my little guy!

Thank You,
Jamie

A little different. I have both snakes & beardies. Snakes/corns yes, you start handing them food in their cages your hand will become their next meal as they figure anything that comes into their cage is food. Also after handling the mice don't go picking up your snake cause you smell like their food. I feed in separate containers to try and break this habit in my snakes. With beardies they rely a lot more on vision, and can pick a wax worm off the palm of your hand, and see an escaped cricket from across the room. They see you drop food in their cages daily. They already think of you as their food supplier. I feed by hand once in a while with the beardies, but mostly greens cause they do fine chasing down their live feeders themselves. You can do it with a treat, etc., and it will help bond a bit.. When feeding by hand the first few times try and use your palm instead of holding the insect in your fingers. They could accidentally get a finger with their treat because they are not use to taking food like this. Bonding comes with trust. If your beardie thinks your going to hurt him he'll get defensive. If this is a new beardie you have to let him get comfortable with his surrounding first, and eating on his own. Once he's eating on his own, then You can try to hand feed, and get him to come closer to you. I've found holding them a little daily for short periods to help. Rarely do beardies bite. I heard it happen very few times, but I never had a dragon bite me, at most a baby will bluff with his mouth open to look tougher then they are -- this I break by sticking a green in their mouth LOL. That pretty much solves that problem in a few days LOL. If your trying to handle come from the side or lift from underneath them. It's instinct for them at first to view anything grabbing them from above as a threat, even a shadow from above can spook some. Good luck, and with a little work beardies become one of the tamest reptiles I had the joy of working with. With some it takes time, but with patience, and light handling I never had an aggressive dragon I could not tame down. To answer your question in my experience hand feeding beardies didn't lead to aggressiveness in any of mine as I have very, very tame dragons now.
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Mystical Dragons webshots pictures
Mystical-Dragons Website

I "hand Feed" mine with tweezers. Reason being, they've learned what the worm bowls and cricket bag look like. Once they see any of those things, they start getting all excited and over anxious. Once the tweezers are in their cage, they attack them and sometimes miss the worm and get the tweezers. I would hate for that to be my fingers! LOL So I use tweezers.

PS: My dragons are FAR from starving. They simply overly enjoy their worms which are a once in a while treat. So they go a bit crazy. LOL
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2.0.0 Iguanas, 2.4.0 Beardies, 1.2.0 Saharan/Nigerian Uromastyx, 1.1.1 Leos, 0.0.1 African Fat Tail, 1.0.0 Columbian Rainbow Boa, 0.0.1 Fla Garter Snake, 0.0.1 Corn Snake, 0.0.3 Fire Belly Toads, 1.0.0 Eastern Painted Turtle, 0.0.1 African Sideneck, 1.1.1 Horses {Baby next May!!!}, 2.2.0 cats, 0.1.0 dog, and I'm done for now.....

I love using plastic feeding tweezers with my dragons. I use them to feed canned crickets and let me tell you, whenever they see the tweezers they come running! Sometimes I use the tweezers to stir their greens when I'm mixing in Re Cal Pellets or other goodies and they'll grab at the tweezers.

With that said I also hand feed them pellets, greens, and one day when I get over touching nasty crickets(canned dead ones of course) I'll offer them by hand too. The interesting part is UNLIKE SNAKES, they don't associate my hand with food so they don't try to bite me when my hand is in their cage. Having had a snakes I realize how much smart and aware Beardies are!
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0.0.2 Bearded Dragons(Ziggy and Stardust)

Thank you for your info! This is a new beardie and I am just trying to do the best I can! Right now he is still a little shy around eating his crix around my husband and I. Those wax worms though...he just can't stay away.
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Jamie
0.0.1 corn (Rio)
0.0.1 beardie (Koda)