Reptile & Amphibian Forums

So I plan on getting a free 1 year old bearded dragon. theyre getting rid of him due to lost interest and they dont want him to sit around. anyway, he is on a diet of greens and large crickets. due to travel restrictions, I can't get crickets very often. the most I would be able to pick any up would be every 2 weeks or so, maybe 3. i plan on switching his diet to pinky mice and greens. so my first question - how hard will it be to switch his diet? Second question - feeding him pinkys, greens, and occasionally crickets/worms of some type, how would his feeding schedule look? Greens every day, pinkies every (?) days, and crickets when i can. please answer if you know, im picking him up this week sometime. Thanks dudes and dudettes

Hopefully you check back so you can see this:

Don't use pinkies as a staple by any means. Way too much fat content for a beardy. You can use them on a RARE occasion as a SPECIAL treat, that is my recommendation. Crickets every 2-3 weeks is fine. You can even purchase a large amount and a plastic cage and cricket food to keep extras in. A majority of bearded dragon diet is vegetables, collard greens and other leafy vegetables. Iceberg lettuce has no nutritional value to steer away from that.

Mine is now a healthy 5 year old adult that feeds on a diet of collard greens ever 2-3 days. She gets Mango slices and romaine lettuce occasionally and a dish of meal worms or a bag of 15 large crickets once every other week (dusted). As juveniles they eat more invertebrates, and as they age take to a more herbivorous diet.

They will eat pinkies and other vertebrates, and while I have no problem feeding her vertebrates except snakes -- one of my friends in Australia had a lacey and when it ate rabbits it would make a mess by chewing it up and leaving entrails and blood everywhere. Its a lot easier to clean up left-over collard greens than it is to clean up blood and guts haha.

Here is a "menu" for bearded dragons from a pet store that I have had some wanderful experiences with and received effective advice from on multiple occasions, has a good and large list of foods foor beardies:
http://www.canberraexotics.com.au/showareainfo.toy?animalnid=109022&infonid=226249