Feeding Roaches to my Beardie?

[R.W.]

If I feed my Beardie Hissing Cockroaches that are roughly the size of an adult cricket, how many can/should she eat a day?

This is of course in addition to a daily variety of different greens/vegetable "salad".

 

[Choobaine]

Well roaches provide decent nutrition, with calcium supplement and greens feed your dragon as much as they will eat in 15 minutes roughly, three parts greens to one part roaches (if it's an adult, of course). I've only fed roaches a few times but the recipe seems to apply to all forms of inverts you chose to feed.
Correct me if I'm wrong folks. Allthough my knowledge of dragons is pretty tight and my boy is healthy so good luck

Anyway you should find one great thing about roaches over crickets - dragons love them! Absolutely go mad for roaches. I don't feed them due to lack of availability and hard to start a colony but I did now and again and it went down very well!

 

[cacoseraph]

heh, i keep a lot of my bugs at a herp petstore. sometimes i ask if i can feed some of their insectivores roaches. the bearded that is by where i keep my bugs LOVES roaches. it will sit on a stick on the highest part of its cage and wait for me to give them to it. funny little dragon

 

[bluefrogtat2]

roaches

mine are fed solely on roaches,although i don't use hissers.they are offered greens everyday and 10 roaches in the morning and ten at night .they are healthy and reproduce like crazy every summer.
i use dubia's discoids,fusca's,prosticus ,and distanti's(i rotate so my colonies don't get to huge,although i could feed 20 more beardies with what i have)
my advice is to set up a big colony and feed for free(only cost you a handful of dogfood and some apples a few times a week)i feed my large collection of tarantulas,scorpions,centipedes from these colonies and they never seem to get any smaller
andy

 

[DMTWI]

I can't speak for the dragons, buy my lg leopard gecko loves dubia roaches! She starts licking her chops when she sees that roach.... :}

 

[R.W.]

Thanks guys, this helps alot! But I have one concern: The chitin in the roaches exoskeletons. What is the risk of impaction from feeding her( my beardie) these roaches? From what I've read so far, I thought I would give her an amount equal to that of the crickets I've been giving her. Is 7-10 crickets/roaches a day w/ the greens okay? Keep in mind that she is an adult, but for some reason she has stayed o the smaller side. I'll post a picture when I get the chance.

 

[Choobaine]

Adults have a lot lower risk of impaction however I wouldn't throw caution to the wind. Roaches that are still the size of adult crickets I imagine aren't any kind of threat (they were allways soft and squishy to me) but I don't see anyone else with a problem here so I suppose it isn't one?

I feed my beardie a mixture of schistocera gregaria (locusts, I used to breed 'em), home bred zoophobas morio and tenibrio molitor.

Back to the point - I don't think little roaches will give your dragon problems.

 

[bluefrogtat2]

skinny

if it's skinny feed more.mine are fat as butter balls
andy

 

[RhettusMaximus]

plump

Yah i fed my beardies roaches for a while and they are slobs now so i put them on a vegetarian diet for a while. They got so freakin' fat!;P

 

[pinkfoot]

In case you're also stuck for what greens to feed...here's some help ~

http://www.beautifuldragons.503xtreme.com/Nutrition.html

 

[Choobaine]

my dragon loves kale, at the moment he's decided to curl up in his jumbo food bowl and is covered in the stuff