Holli Friedland: I am Holli Friedland, Program Director at the Mid-Atlantic Reptile Show and this is How to Care for a Bearded Dragon. Now we are going to talk about feeding your bearded dragon.

If you get a bearded dragon as a baby, they only eat insects and as they get older you can incorporate more foods into their diet. There are commercial pellet foods that are available that you can soak them water and then mix them in. But really a natural diet is best and that is the mixture of protein and vegetables. So you can make a salad out of chopped up of vegetables, the best vegetables to use are once that have a high calcium to phosphorous ratio and those are collard greens, mustard green, turnip greens and you can mix things in. Bearded dragons like a lot of lizards that are vegetarians like the colors of yellow and red. So if you put shredded carrots in or shredded sweet potatoes and mix that in, that will attract them to eat that stuff that's better for them which is in high in calcium greens. Also they eat a variety of insects and some of them as they get older, even eats small rodents. They can eat crickets, meal worms, superworms, wax worms, any kind of commercial sold bugs. There is also sock worms that are available and you can feed them about three to five times a week of each of the things. Usually we feed bearded dragons vegetables every other day and then protein every other day and that way they get a good mixture. And you want to add calcium powder to their vegetables and also to their crickets, when you feed them. And once a week you can give them a regular general vitamin. And that's feeding your bearded dragon. Next we are going to talk about how to troubleshoot problems with your bearded dragon.