Aussie Pythons

The chances are that you’ve come to this page because your bearded dragon wont eat, or you want to know what to feed bearded dragons. So I hope that I can help you discover the problem.

First of all are the temperatures. If it’s too cold in the enclosure your bearded dragon will slow down and wont eat. This generally happens during winter, and it’s not really too much of a problem. People recommend to keep the enclosure hot all year and to feed as much as possible, however I’ve seen bearded dragons have only two or three feeds every winter and have no adverse affects. So if your bearded dragon wont eat and it’s a cold time of year, try checking to see if the temperatures are correct, if it’s too cold, add another heat light. The temperature should be around 32-33 at the basking site.

Now, perhaps it’s just that your bearded dragon isn’t eating vegetables. If that’s the case, don’t worry at all. Most bearded dragons, especially young ones, hate vegetable. The reason they don’t eat them is because they don’t move, like live food, they don’t invoke any instinctual feeding response. So try feeding them live food and vegetables in the same dish, they’ll see the movement and eat everything there. Or try wiggling some thin sticks of carrot in front of them until you annoy them so much that they eat it. Vegetables are great for the health of a bearded dragon, but once again, they’re not essential. Some bearded dragons eat nothing but crickets and live for over ten years.

Now, the final possible reason, the one we all hope that it isn’t; a health problem. There are a few health problems that could cause your bearded dragon to stop eating. The most common is impaction, basically reptile constipation. Don’t take it lightly though, impaction is a killer if left long enough. If you think your bearded dragon could be impacted, the most notable signs of this would be if your bearded dragon wont eat and hasn’t defecated after it’s last feed, you should soak the dragon in some lukewarm water, and of course make sure it’s head is above the water level. This warm bath could provoke the dragon to have a bowel movement and clear out the impaction. However if it doesn’t and your bearded dragon still wont eat, take it to a vet as soon as possible.

So if you came here to find out what to feed bearded dragons and you had to read through all of that to get to this section, I’m sorry, but it’s valuable information to anyone with a bearded dragon.

Bearded dragons mainly eat live insects. Crickets and wood-roaches are the most popular. Wood-roaches (or woodies) are more nutritious than crickets and most bearded dragons seem to prefer them. You should combine the live food with vegetables. Carrots, corn and peas are good for bearded dragons, try to get an 80% live food – 20% vegetables diet. There are some vegetables that you mustn’t feed bearded dragons because they’re deadly. A general rule of thumb is to stay away from spinach, raw squash or anything with very high Vitamin A levels. Live food should be dusted in reptile calcium powder before every feed to provide the essential calcium levels for a bearded dragon’s diet.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010 at 10:07 am and is filed under Australian Lizards. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.