Bearded dragon food: horror stories just about mealworms+crickets?
Hi, new beardie keeper here (had mine about a month).
Currently I am feed small crickets (dusted and fed good diets themselves), the occasional small locust, and veg (although he's not too keen cos he's so young). Now I am not going to nurture him any type of worms/grubs until he is bigger but I thought I'd share what I'd heard regarding mealworms as a possible future food choice.
WARNING: some details may be disturbing. I hear these mealworm horror stories from a guy who owns a reptile shop in my home town.
Okay. The guy reckons he bought 2 intersting morphs from a reptile gala in Hamburg, Germany. He claims he had them for about a month, since one died. He claims he had fed them no mealworms. He said that mealworms can live, undigested, in the stomach, and are competent to eat their way out of the beardie. He found that they had remained alive contained by the beardie's stomach for up to 4 weeks before eating their way out and massacre the lizard. Even typing this is giving me the shivers, but this is what I was told. I need to find out if this is true for the sake of my beardie.
I be told by the same guy that crickets - being omnivorous - can attack sleeping dragons. I know this is true because there be some living in the viv in a hollow piece of wood (which I have in a minute removed). I saw it come out after dark and bite my lizard, he flinched but couldn't move as he had cooled down. It creeped me out, I removed everyhting from tha tank and started again. I immediately remove any crickets that are uneaten straight away.
This same guy told me that he had a friend whose beardie was, as he put it, "turned into a snake" by crickets, which ate the legs past its sell-by date. Another case was when the top of the skull be eaten off.
I know this is disgusting but I need to find out just about the possible dangers of mealworms and crickets. I couldn't believe this stuff but I'm still learning and want the best for my beautiful little beardie.
Also, he claimed that locusts are herbivores and accordingly pose no threat to the lizard if they remain in the viv. Is this true?
Thanks for your time and knowledge, Glenn
What you have been told and/or heard in the order of the meal worms are as others say; over exaggerated and just urban legends.
Now crickets hold been know to bit at your beardie at night while it is sleeping and that is why you should merely put a few crickets in at a time when feeding your beardie. Once he/she is done eating, do your best to go and get the remaining crickets out. They are more of an annoyance than they are "deadly." I have had live crickets disappeared in my beardies cage and nothing have ever happened. Hey, that is just more for her to snack on the subsequent day.
Meal worms and crickets are both highly recommend to be part of the beard dragons diet. I personally don't feed meal worms, but that is to say my personal thing.
There are plenty of websites to look at, so just go look at a few of them and you establish what is best for your bearded dragon.
Best of luck.
if you are really that concerned next you can buy dead crickets and meal worms and put them in a vibrater dish article that makes it look like they are alive. it might work.
Answers: bite and small injuries from mealworms, crickets, locusts are okay know. the mealworm eating its way out of the stomach is a rumour and reptile urban myth a mealworm could not survive 5 mins a a reptiles stomach.
i have see a case where a leopard gecko grabbed a mealworm by the tail and the mealworm bit its eye cause blindness and mealworms and crickets can bite animals while they sleep (it would take days (or hundreds of crickets to remove a limb tho)
this is why u shouldnt leave any livefood surrounded by with your pets for more than 1 hour (normally less than 30 mins is better)
This is just an urban legend. Actually, mealworms aren't good for your beardie, but for a totally different judgment.
They have a rather hard outer shell, call chitin, that is hard for a beardie, especially a babe-in-arms beardie, to digest. And when you compare the nutritive value of mealworms next to crickets, superworms or other types of roaches and worms, mealworms are not as nutritious.
It is true, however, that crickets will eat the skin of your beardie. I seriously doubt a unbroken leg was eaten off, but they will bite, causing sores which can easily become infected. You should always remove any live prey that go uneaten after your beardie's meal.
Please visit http://www.beardeddragon.org for the best beardie caresheets and tons of useful guidance from the forums.
Your friend like to exaggerate
I lurk the beardie forums a lot and have never heard of a worm intake its way out of a beardie. When the beardie chews a worm the force and the bacteria in the lizard's mouth massacre it almost instantly.
Crickets will munch on the lizard if you leave them within the enclosure and there is nothing else for them to put away, but it would take a long time and a lot of crickets to eat a beardie's leg. You would enjoy to neglect it for several days.
you should not feed your dragon meal worms they are intricate for them to digest and they can get impacted which means they cant digest their food properly. crickets should not be left within the cage because they can bite the dragon but as stated above it would take lots of crickets and neglect for them to devour a limb off the dragon.you should feed your dragon three times a year for 15 minutes each time. dust the crickets with pure calcium. vibrating bowls are intensely expensive as far as i have heard. i would not leave any live prey surrounded by the bearded dragons cage. but a bowl of greens should be avaliable for your dragon during the day.
its all b.s.
as are most of the answers here.
and f.y.i. mealworms enjoy a much higher caloric value then crickets. when dusted and intestine loaded they are as good if not better then crickets as a food steady.
The stomach acid if not the chomping down by the dragon would decimate the worms. Most of the time when the animal has died and the owner spots worms eating the area of the stomach they regard they were eating their way out, when contained by reality they were probably eating their course in. The stomach skin is thinner and easier to break, then other parts of the body. I have have crickets bite a lizard or two but if the tank isn't overrun with them, the lizard should be fine. However whether the lizard is dying or injured then the crickets would eat at the site of the injury. My horror story isn't as bad as the one you be told, but it still disturbed me. I had a collared lizard that had an open sore on it's tail that get infected before I knew it was even a problem and wasn't doing very well, I knew that he wouldn't survive long. I went to sleep and the next morning he be dead, but what bothered me was the little sore on the tail was around half the tail thanks to the crickets eating on the flesh of the unconscious. I think the ONLY way that crickets could have eat the legs off of a dragon was if nearby was thousands in the tank or he be dead.
I have never feed locusts to any of my lizards, so I don't know much in the order of them.
For more info on beardies check out the following sites: bearded-dragons.com ot beardeddragon.org
