Couple dragon questions

[MrLang]

Thanks so much. So the calcium:phosphorus ratio should be high calcium for low phosphorus? I didn't read this on any care sheets. Why is phosphorus bad?

I've been feeding them a mix of collard, turnip, and dandelion greens with a small amount of grated sweet potato and they really seem to be enjoying it. My local Walmart has the collard and turnip bunches for 98 cents a piece, and Hannaford's has 2 dollar bunches of dandelion greens so I can live with that.

Have you had more success with soaking the bearded dragon diet in a little water before putting it in the salad? My dragons seem to be picking around it at this point and I thought it might sneak in a bit better if it were soft.

I'm also feeding around 5 adult crickets a day (it's not bigger than the gap between the eyes) and 1 superworm on top of their salad. 6 days RepCal calcium and 1 day Herpetivite.

Thanks for all of the help

[Dracoluna]

Thanks so much. So the calcium:phosphorus ratio should be high calcium for low phosphorus? I didn't read this on any care sheets. Why is phosphorus bad?

I've been feeding them a mix of collard, turnip, and dandelion greens with a small amount of grated sweet potato and they really seem to be enjoying it. My local Walmart has the collard and turnip bunches for 98 cents a piece, and Hannaford's has 2 dollar bunches of dandelion greens so I can live with that.

Have you had more success with soaking the bearded dragon diet in a little water before putting it in the salad? My dragons seem to be picking around it at this point and I thought it might sneak in a bit better if it were soft.

I'm also feeding around 5 adult crickets a day (it's not bigger than the gap between the eyes) and 1 superworm on top of their salad. 6 days RepCal calcium and 1 day Herpetivite.

Thanks for all of the help

Phosphorus is not bad, per say but they require more calcium otherwise the body will pull calcium from the bones in order to balance the body. This link explains it better than I can under MBD.
http://www.thebeardeddragon.webs.com...uesdisease.htm

As for the mix, sounds decent. Just make sure that if you are dusting, use straight calcium and NOT the calcium with phosphorus.

With the diet, I feed it pretty much exclusively when I feed. When I give her greens and fruit, it's always at separate times. As a baby, I soaked it for her because I was afraid that it was too rough on her teeth but it would also make it easier to eat. I still add a bit of water now as she's older and though she's only lost one tooth so far, I don't see the point in putting more stress on her teeth than necessary. In the wild, they wouldn't be grinding up things that were so hard. Besides, between greens and hard pebbles, they will pick around them and I don't blame them. When fed together, Wyrwrenth will eat all of it but she's also been on this diet since she was a baby. As a baby, she probably would have picked around it because they don't immediately recognize the pellets as food. In the wild, there are not pellets laying around, so they need to be taught that it is a food source. Once that happens, you're good.

You can actually mix the calcium and herptivite together. I believe it's a 50/50 ratio. Just dust the crickets in that. Herptivite doesn't contain straight vitamin A so you don't need to worry about toxicity with it. Also, I'm assuming your crickets are gut-loaded? You can use high calcium food sources to gut-load as well. I forget who told me this but it's true if you look at it. Think of a cricket as a gelcap. Whatever you feed them is what your dragon is getting. You need more calcium? Give the crickets a high calcium diet. As a treat? Don't bother gut-loading and you end up with relatively little nutritional value other than the base protein.

And no problem on the help. When I first got into them, I had several breeders who were kind enough to talk to me at length about diets and such. Their experience is why I use the pelleted diet. With one dragon, I found I was wasting more greens than using as they only keep a few days. One thing I do like getting her are the organic spring greens in the little plastic containers. Those keep about 5-6 days and she enjoys the treat when I can't get stuff out of the back yard for her.

[lisafoster2510]

My guys get supers and dubias I hate crickets. They also get greens and a little fruit which my adult completely refuses. I however would not feed the pre made stuff. A good vitamin can help make up for what they might be lacking.