Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My beardie is a little over a year old...but I think he is small for his age (not sure, but seems to be compared to some pics I've seen here). I feed him crickets but mainly veggies in the recent past and will be placing him under a MVB (has not at UVB exposure for a while but with all the dust, etc (veggies) his is fine). He is as pissy as ever! I'm wondering if it would be a better choice to feed him silk worms instead of crickets (noisy and messy). I just wonder how fast they grow. (Don't want them to get too big too fast, besides my Uros don't need extra protein.)They seem to be a little more than crickets, but a better food and nutrient source (that makes it worth it). How much growth should I see out of him after a year?

Silkworms are much much better nutrition wise than crickets and are less likely to carry parasites. Silkworms are higher in protein and calcium as well has having a higher water content. They are great as a stable insect food. They are no mess, no noise, no escape and not smell (unless you don't like the smell of mulberry leaves). They are easy to breed as well (to the point you almost have to put the male and female moths together for them to do their thing).

A year old dragon is pretty much done their growing but may still gain an inch, it varies between dragons. My dragon is nearly two years old now but is till growing, mostly because 5 months of her first year was brumating. (she brumated when she was about 11 months old). What I used to do, is I buy 100 1" worms and by the time the worms were getting close to cocooning, I wouldn't have much left. Being soft bodied you can get away feeding them larger than the space between the eyes. I wouldn't feed really large ones to baby dragons, but have fed 3" worms to my dragon (nearly twice the distance between her eyes if not more) but she never had any trouble with digesting it. The skin is so soft, they just mash down realy quick, like greens. No hard exoskeleton to press against the spine or taking extra long to digest. I don't feed more than 2-4 of the large silkworms to my dragon though, they are filling.