Can I feed dubia roaches to a bearded dragon ?

[ball python 22]

Can I feed a bearded dragon dubia roaches ?

[LaFilleClochette]

yes you can! When I had a colony of dubia I fed them to my beardies and they absolutely loved it!

[mainbutter]

Absolutely, they are probably one of the best feeders you could ever choose.

[Jared2608]

Regarding the roaches, I was thinking of starting a colony, and then in a few months getting a Beardie. I was wondering if you could feed a baby bearded dragon small roaches instead of crickets. Also, do you need to gut load the roaches like you do with crickets?

[Strange_Evil]

Regarding the roaches, I was thinking of starting a colony, and then in a few months getting a Beardie. I was wondering if you could feed a baby bearded dragon small roaches instead of crickets. Also, do you need to gut load the roaches like you do with crickets?

**BUMP** ^This is something i'm also worrying about as we'll, crickets aren't cheap.

[2kdime]

I always just kept my roaches fed and pulled out what I needed

I think "gut loading" refers to buying feeders from pet stores, then getting them home and making sure they are fed and watered before feeding them to your pets.

With your own colony, your good to go

[rperry03]

Gut loading is something that you typical do to add calcium and vitamins into the feeder so the beardie gets the nutrients too.

Im not sure about gut loading roaches but I always feed crickets with gut loaders.

[Trogdorpheus]

Gut loading with calcium will actually kill most feeder insects unless you're feeding them off immediately (Toxic levels of calcium for the bugs), but protein is certainly good. Typically I fed my roaches a half and half blend of high protein puppy chow and whole oats (not the quick oats crap). I'd put that in the blender and let it get pretty well ground up so its easier for them to eat. Also, if you're looking to kickstart the breeding in your colony, you'll want to keep the temps at about 83-87 F, humidity up, water crystals, and keep maybe half of an orange in there. For whatever reason, the citrus is kinda like roach viagra...

Small dubia can be fed to small beardies, so Jared and Strange, you're both good to go. Just try not to feed roaches larger than the space between the dragon's eyes.

[rperry03]

Gut loading with calcium will actually kill most feeder insects unless you're feeding them off immediately (Toxic levels of calcium for the bugs), but protein is certainly good. Typically I fed my roaches a half and half blend of high protein puppy chow and whole oats (not the quick oats crap). I'd put that in the blender and let it get pretty well ground up so its easier for them to eat. Also, if you're looking to kickstart the breeding in your colony, you'll want to keep the temps at about 83-87 F, humidity up, water crystals, and keep maybe half of an orange in there. For whatever reason, the citrus is kinda like roach viagra...

Small dubia can be fed to small beardies, so Jared and Strange, you're both good to go. Just try not to feed roaches larger than the space between the dragon's eyes.

How hard are they to keep going and what size colony should you start out with? ohhh and do they small as bad as crickets?

[Trogdorpheus]

Nothing smells as bad as crickets... except maybe sin.

As long as you maintain their temperature/humidity and keep food and a water source available they'll do the rest. I think I added food/water every other day and cleaned the tub once ever 2-3 months, so really easy to manage.

As for starting size, that depends on several things. How many mouths you want to feed, and how long you'd like to wait for your colony to be self sufficient. If you plan on waiting for 3-4 months before you are going to start feeding out of it then you'd probably be ok with 10 adult pairs and maybe 100 mixed sizes... if you're wanting to start in 1-2 months then I'd say 50 adult pairs and 100 or so mixed.

Consider that a baby beardie will eat maybe 15 small roaches per day (sometimes more). An adult female dubia will give birth to maybe 25 (average) nymphs every 2 months (1 month gestation then 1 month before gettin knocked up again). So you would be looking at maybe, 450 small roaches per month * 2 month gestation / 25 babies per lay. In that case you'd need at least* 36 adult females (per dragon) constantly producing in ideal conditions to never see a decrease in your population.

*If your baby eats more, obviously this number will be higher. Not to mention that there will be die offs, so that's why I went with 50 in my initial estimate. 50 females in ideal conditions would yield about 625 nymphs per month.

THEN AGAIN, your dragon might not eat like a cow, and you'll see a huge explosion in population of roaches and you'll be able to sell off the excess and recover your initial setup costs.

EDIT: forgot to mention that it takes about 3 months for a newborn nymph to reach adulthood.