A Basic Care Guide for Bearded Dragons	2
Housing
Substrate
Heat & Lighting
Furniture
Diet
Questions? Comments? Send me an e-mail

      Dragons love to eat and diet affects their coloration, health, and longevity. Bearded Dragons are omnivorous and are best given a variety of foods for optimum health. These lizards enjoy eating and probably appreciate a variety of foods for that reason as well.

      Offer baby dragons small crickets every day. At this age, dragons can be a little delicate when it comes to food and animals fed too large an insect sometimes suddenly develop paralysis of the rear legs, twitching, and other problems, probably because of pressure on the spine. It is better to feed lots of small insects than a couple of large ones. A good measure of proper size is to imagine 2 crickets sitting side by side on the dragon's head. If they fit, that's the size you want. Once your dragon reaches about 8" he is far less delicate and you may feel free to feed him just about anything he can tackle. Baby dragons grow very fast and need to be able to eat as many insects as they want on a daily basis. <= THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT FOR THEIR HEALTH. You may be amazed at how much a little dragon can eat, but don't skimp on the insects!

      Fresh vegetables are also important at this age and should be available on a daily basis. Just about anything you can eat is fine- just remember to go easy on cabbage, kale, spinach, broccoli and iceberg lettuce. These have all been shown to cause health problems when fed in excessive amounts to vegetarian lizards. Remember to shred hard vegetables like carrots up and chopping the salad into smaller pieces is a good idea as well. Offer a variety of vegetables, rather than a few over and over. Vegetables should be fed out of a dish. Use a large, deep dish for adults so they don't get excessive amounts of sand on their salad.

      I like to offer some dry commercial bearded dragon food for variety as well. It may need to be crushed up for baby dragons, or it's too large for them to eat. I offer it either separately or mixed into the salad. It can be soaked first in water or juice, which is probably better for your dragon than offering it dry, as dry food without much water content is unnatural for dragons. Generally the more colorful and strongly scented brands attract the dragons better, but they will learn to eat anything given enough time. You may have to be patient for a few weeks before your dragon really shows an interest in some brands of dry food. Once they get a taste for it, however, it grows on them and they seem to like it more and more. .

      Fruit may be offered in small amounts as an occasional (once a week or so) treat.

      Once the dragons are about a year old and their growth has slowed, I continue to offer as much vegetables and the dry commercial food as the lizards want to eat, but I cut back on the number of crickets and other insects they eat. This encourages them to eat more of the vegetable matter, which is cheaper and probably better for the adults than allowing them to fill up constantly on crickets.

      A dish of water should always be available. It may take a little experimenting to find a good location in the cage where the dragons won't tromp through it all the time.

      Baby dragons may take some time to learn to drink from a dish. Care must be taken to ensure that baby dragons under three months of age do not dehydrate. Offer water out of a shallow dish, so the lizard can easily and accidentally walk into the water and find it. Be sure to provide fresh leafy greens daily, as they will help to provide some water to the dragon when it eats them. Mist dragons under three months of age once or twice daily. Not enough to soak the dragon and the cage, but just a light mist that leaves tiny dropplets on the walls of the enclosure and the dragon. Usually by the time a dragon has reached three months of age, it has learned to drink from a bowl so misting may be discontinued at this age.

      Use a calcium and a multivitamin supplement powder. I dust insects with the powder at every feeding. Avoid supplements with phosphorous as phosphorous is already found in crickets and vegetables so is not desirable in a calcium supplement. When keeping your dragon indoors under full spectrum tubes, use a calcium supplement that has vitamin d3.

      The supplements I use and enthusiastically recommend are made by Nutrition Support Services at Walkabout Farm. I strongly believe these supplements to be the very best available. They are veterinary formulated by one of the top reptile nutritionists in the country, have undergone extensive feeding trials, and are used by leading zoos, veterinarians, and herpetoculturists. These supplements are truly cutting edge in their formulation, and are now available to everyone. The supplement called "Bearded Dragon Dust" is for using on crickets and other insects. The supplement called "Bearded Dragon Complete Mix" is used on vegetables. You can learn more about them and order them at the Walkabout Farm website www.herpnutrition.com.

      The most economical way to purchase crickets is to buy them in bulk. I buy mine from ReptileFood.com. I've tried many cricket suppliers over the years and ReptileFood.com is the most reliable I've used. The crickets are shipped overnight, they are very clean, appropriately sized, and the price is excellent to boot.

      Up to 1000 crickets may be housed in a 20 gallon plastic storage tub (Walmart $4). The sides can be roughed up with sandpaper about halfway up, and then crickets can be caught simply by using a cup to collect them off the sides. Be sure they have plenty of ventilation.

      Crickets are only as nutritious as what they eat. Therefore it is extremely important that you "gutload" your crickets by feeding them a nutritious food for a day or two before feeding them to the dragon. There are commercial cricket chows available for crickets intended as food for reptiles. This is an excellent way to gutload your crickets. Walkabout Farm makes an excellent cricket food. Crickets LOVE the stuff and it is loaded with a variety of nutritious ingredients designed to maximize the nutritional value of crickets used for feeding lizards. You should offer fresh vegetables and fruit like apples and oranges to your crickets in addition to the dry food. This will keep them from dying of thirst and will add further nutritional value to them.

      Although crickets should form the basis of the insect part of the diet, other insects may be offered for occasional variety as well, such as mealworms, superworms, butterworms, waxworms, spiders, moths, grasshoppers, even earthworms.

      Do not feed wild collected insects from areas that have been sprayed for bugs. Do not feed butterflies unless you know which ones are toxic. Do not feed your dragon fire-flies (lightning-bugs) -these insects will kill your dragons fast (make sure your cage is firefly proof as well, if you keep your lizard outside during the summer and live in an area that has these insects).