Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I finally got Sydney to eat his veggies!!! I thought I'd tried everything, but here's how I finally did it.

Step 1: I put him on a diet. he only got up to 10 crickets every other day, to insure he'd be hungry.

Step 2: Carrots and peas, the frozen/defrosted kind. I put 8 little carrots and some peas over dandelion greens (I count the carrots just as an indication of whether he ate or not).

So far he's started eating some carrots, some peas, and I'm hoping some greens. Next week I'll start counting out the greens to see if he's eating them. He's been sick, so I'm hoping this is a sign of good things.

I really don't remember the history of your beardie but if he's been sick be careful about not feeding him. The last thing he needs is to be stressed out about being hungry. If I were you, I'd make sure he hasn't been sick for a good while before keeping food from him only to get him to eat greens. Also, how old is he again?
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Rob Talkington

Don't worry, I make sure he gets his fill. It's not that he doesn't understand veggies as a food source, it's just that when he is getting as many crickets as he can eat everyday, he fills up on them and never eats any veggies. Don't get me wrong, since he's been sick I haven't been keeping food from him, but he's been doing much better now. His calcium levels are evening out now, and he just needs a treatment of panacur for his strongylls and he'll be golden. This would be the follow up treatment for the strongylls. The original treatment was about a month ago, and it was ivermectin and the vet told us to come back in a month for the other shot, but I did some research and decided I don't want to use ivermectin due to the risks involved, so I've just gotta get a fecal sample to the other vet this week and get some panacur for him. He certainly hasn't been showing his parasites though. Occasionally he'll be a little lethargic, hiding in his hide log, but if I wake him up for the daily routine, he hops up and starts basking. He's also been fairly active lately too. I've been giving him about 7ml of gatorade everyday because he's had some calcium problems (first too little and then too much) and his uric acid was high, and from my research at least the calcium deficiency was mainly caused by a diet of almost entirely crickets. He's actually been seemingly better also just now from eating veggies more.

He's two years old I believe, which is why I've been so anxious to get him eating the veggies. I don't want to run into problems from too much protein. I was terrified when I heard his calcium levels were low and his phosphate levels were high because those are signs of the start of kidney problems. I think now that it's evening out I don't have much to worry about besides just getting him to eat veggies.

thanks for the concern.

I'm not sure carrots and peas will be much better for him. Make sure he is eating those greens. If he only picks out the carrots and peas he is still not getting the nutrients he needs from eating veggies.
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2.0 bearded dragons (Ocho / Domo-kun)
0.1 kingsnake (Rio)
1.0 ferret (Playstation)
1.0 cat (Wally)
0.1 dog (Tima)

this is only stage one of the plan. Not quite sure what stage two is yet, but it basically involves getting him to eat better things. Right now I've just been worried about him eating the veggies, so once he is eating them regularly, I can start decreasing the amount of stuff that isn't as good, and increasing the amount of stuff that is. If all else fails, don't the T-rex sandfire supplements work well for turning bad food into good? It would be much better to just get him eating the good stuff though.