Feeding

Please feel free to use the below information as a rough guide but it’s by no means comprehensive, I would recommend buying a Manual or looking around different reference sites to try and build up a balanced Idea of how much and what to feed your Reptile.

Noodles The Chinese Water Dragon Eating a Meal Worm

 

All of our lizards are fed daily. They love regular meal worm, brown crickets and Locust. We occasionally feed Waxworms as a treat but only 2 or 3 a week. The Beardies absolutely love their vegetables, broccoli, curly kale, cabbage etc finely chopped…

We also gut load the live food, so, crickets, meal worm and locust get carrot, satsuma segments, cabbage and occasionally we use cricket feed and cricket water as well as this helps build the nutritional value of the food so that it’s healthier and tastier for the Reptiles.

We dust all the food with Bearded Dragon or Gecko dust, every serving, as this adds plenty of vitamins and minerals to the meals/ treats. We dust the food with nutribol twice a week but not on consecutive days as this helps build up calcium which is extremely important to stop diseases such as Metabolic Bone Disease (MBD).

The bigger Beardies get about 5x size 3 locusts for breakfast and tea time and they have a generous sized bowl of meal worm which they snack on throughout the day. We tend to mix in cabbage or other above veg and they’ll nibble away like it’s a steak salad.

The Younger Beardie out eats the larger beardies at the moment she’s a real monster. She has about 10-12 size 2 locusts a day and will eat a full bowl of mealies each day.

All of our Beardies are Juvenile at this stage so it’s important they eat lots of Protein over filling them with Veg. Dave is sub-adult so he’s started liking a lot more veg, the others are offered it but as you will probably learn/ already know… Beardies will do what they want my two are younger and they perfer eating jumpy and wriggly things with a pulse.

The Geckos tend to have about 5x slightly smaller locusts each every day and again have a bowl of mealies, but don’t need veg. There are a few geckos in one enclosure so they share the meal worms. Some eat more than others as they are different ages and sizes. We have a Giant Female Albino who will happily keep up with a Sub-Adult Beardie on the Locust and Mealworm Front.

The Chinese water dragon is only small as it’s still young, he has 3x locusts a day and a bowl of meal worms (again all dusted), I don’t offer him veg as he isn’t interested and they don’t need it the same as Beardies.

This is how we feed our Reptiles and they are all very healthy, the Geckos have nice fat tails and the beardies have lots of energy.  It is however our preference and different Reptiles will have different personalities and tastes. I would recommend “The Bearded Dragon Manual” and “The Leopard Gecko Manual” as a good reference to help you understand what to feed and what not to feed as this is important. There are acidic fruits which some reptiles shouldn’t have so I would recommend research if you are unsure what fruit & veg to feed.

Reptile manuals can be found at book stores online such as Amazon or Play.com. You can also pick them up from L’N'D Exotics in Mansfield Woodhouse.

You can purchase cricket feed, cricket water and various other items from your local reptile shops such as L’N'D Exotics or you can visit www.masonexotics.co.uk