Reptile & Amphibian Forums

for my 1 year old BDs, I normally feed them a lot of salad and a limited number of insects. they get about 10-20 crix a week a couple of roaches and about a dozen supers a month. I have a large supply of roaches now and am thinking of feeding them off to get the numbers down.

do you think there would be any adverse reaction to increasing the amount of roaches fed by 2-3 times normal for a couple of weeks?

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Bennett

Home of the Florida Orange
www.beardiedragon.com

Bennett,

From what I understand, they are great for them. I don't see why that would cause any problems other than the possibility that they may start holding out for the roaches.

I sure would have some around but my wife has put her foot down to the roaches.
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Joel R

Coming some day.
www.SpikesAndScales.com

I feed ALOT of roaches to my beardies. I very seldom feed any crickets, so the bulk of the live prey diet is roaches. I even feed lots of roaches to my 6-12 month-olds. I have orange-heads, and bliptica dubia's.

So, to answer your question, based on my experience I don't think there will be any problems. Unless you have hissers, which I have no experience with, roaches digest very well, and if you ever squish one you will see that they have large amounts of stomache contents, makeing it possible to gut load with very high quality nutrients in good amounts.

I never had problems feeding large amounts of roaches, Ithink your beardies will be fine.
Hope this helps,
Paul Kemes

my concern was overloading them with animal protien vs greens at one year old. I know that greens are better for them as they get older. I give my babies all the roaches they can eat every day + greens.
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Bennett

Home of the Florida Orange
www.beardiedragon.com

I think that may cause problems over a long period of time but not for a while. Adults tend to loose some interest in the bugs and crave the veggies more anyway so I don't think just feeding out a group of bugs would do any harm. Just keep the individual feedings in perspective & don't let them become glutens. lol
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Joel R

Coming some day.
www.SpikesAndScales.com

The bearded dragon may not be able to cope with a sudden change of diet. It may vomit once or twice. Its happened to me before.
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sincerely,
Jonathan D. de Kluyver
JDDK Reptiles
Quality Reptiles and Amphibianswww.jddkreptiles.com