Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi,

I have a young (maybe a few months) beardie and he's about 4 inches long. Do I have to worry about overfeeding him? How many crickets should he eat? I usually feed in crickets twice a day, about 7 crickets per serving. I always keep veggies in the tank.

Thanks,
Mitch

babies need almost 90% of their diet to be protein...if they eat some veggies then great...but their bodies crave protein as they are growing very rapidly. 14 crickets a day does not sound like enough for a baby.

Feed 2-3 times a day as much as they can/will eat in a 5-10 minute period. It is VERY common for them to eat more than 20 crickets in one meal--some eat even more than that.

Make sure the crickets are not too big-- they should be smaller than the space between the beardie's eyes, too big and your baby could choke or become impacted.

It can be expensive to feed a baby. Adding pellets to the salad will add additional protein (if they will eat the pellets). We ended up purchasing crickets by the 1000 online. It was so much cheaper than the petstores. I can say that once my beardie was an adult the food bills have gone way down!

Thanks for the info. I was worried about that topic. Looks like I will start feeding him more. Thanks so much!