What should a Bearded Dragon eat daily?
Bearded Dragons are omnivores, their main daily diet will consist of live insects and vegetation. As youngsters they tend to consume more insects than vegetation, needing the additional protein to fuel their growth. Once fully developed into an adult their insect requirements slow down and their diet becomes more vegetation based.
Fresh appropriate fruit and vegetables can be offered as well as live insects. The list of what can and cant be eaten by bearded dragons is too exhaustive to mention here and as knowledge progresses advice often changes, your best source of up to date information is one of the many specialist forums or social media groups. But here are a few general pointers,
- Dont feed overly sweet fruits often - occasional treats are fine
- Avoid salads such as Iceberg which are mainly water and lacking nutrition, again occasional use may be fine but will probably result in loose or runny poos! dark leafed salads are a better alternative.
- Avoid over reliance on greens such as spinach and kale that contain a substance called Oxalic acid which binds with free calcium in the gut and prevents it being absorbed by the dragon. There are however useful nutrients in these so shouldn't be ruled out all together, just feed as part of a varied diet.
- Ensure vegetables, salads and fruits are supplemented with calcium and/or multivitamins to the manufacturers specification.
Insects should be offered daily, your dragon would like to be given the opportunity to hunt and eat live insects daily, make sure you feed a variety of insects to keep things interesting for the bearded dragon. Their favourites are usually locusts, crickets, mealworms, waxworms and morio worms. For appropriate sized insects and suitable varieties see our food pack selections here We have broken down food packs into appropriate sizes and selections based on the life stage of the dragon and into staple diet packs and treat packs.
The following advice can usually be followed..
- Only feed insects who's length is equivalent to the gap between your dragons eyes, this is a general rule of thumb and tends not to apply once you get up to the adult sized locusts.
- Don't over feed! obesity is a big problem for modern pet reptiles, offer a few insects at a time.
- If they don't eat insects or anything one day that's fine, going off their food for longer periods of weeks may indicate a problem however.