Do you have any recs on how to get a beardie to eat greens? I've tried every green and staple veggie on the list. I've tried bee pollen and hiding bugs in the greens Or shoving greens in his mouth while he chews bugs. Nothing works.The only plant will eat is hibiscus flowers. He's 2 years old now and I'm worried at this rate I'm going to have to syringe feed him slurries just to get some greens in him. The rescue I work at just got in a beardie that has gout which makes me even more worried!
Oof. That’s a tough one. My previous bearded dragon, Buddha Buddy, was like that and I never managed to get him to willingly take greens in the entire nine years of his life (screwed up when he was young and didn’t offer them enough because I didn’t know nearly as much back then). I know of one person in my bearded dragon group who gets hers to eat its greens by floating the greens in a bowl of water but that might not work for everyone. You can also try holding them in the tongs like you do with bugs and wiggling them. Sometimes when Aries isn’t as hungry in winter I can get him to take his by doing that. Definitely gut-load any insects you have before offering them to him with some of the greens you want him to eat to at least get some of that nutritional value into him. It’s better than nothing and it’s a sneaky way to get a bit into him. I’d also recommend getting a really good multivitamin supplement for him and using it at least once a week too to make sure he’s getting some vitamins, even if it’s just from a powder.
Also have you tried fruit or dandelion flowers to stimulate his appetite? Fruit should really only be given in small amounts, but it also has many of the nutrients a beardy gets from greens. You could still try to mix it with the greens to try to get him to eat them. If he likes hibiscus flowers, he may be willing to try other flowers too. Dandelions in particular are a really healthy food for most plant eating reptiles, and the bright color of the flowers might interest him. Clover and it’s flowers are also another option if collected from a pesticide free area. A lot of beardies go crazy over clover (Aries being one of them). Generally, a lot of the flowers that are safe for tortoises to eat are also safe for beardies. Aries is also fond of cactus flowers from the Texas prickly pears in my parent’s yard (I only feed him the petals and the pollen since the rest of those flowers have thorns).
There’s also these things. Nutritionally, they’re trash, but they have a strong, fairly pleasant smell and a color that my picky eater was really into. I’d mix them into his greens so he’d grab them when he was trying to grab the small, slippery squares and that helped a bit. The only thing is that they turn your dragon’s poop an alarming shade of green, and, like I said, they’re not very nutritious. They worked for me as an appetite stimulator though when I got really desperate.
Honestly if absolutely nothing works, I’d recommend maybe discussing it with a reptile vet. A boarded vet may have tricks that the average pet owner knows nothing about, and, if all else fails, they can help you come up with a nutritional plan that may let you supplement their diet in other ways, or give you techniques that make getting greens into him easier. Or, if it’s somehow health related, they may be able to identify the problem.
If you get a baby in the future, start offering greens as young as you can. For Aries, I basically always had a bowl of greens somewhere in his cage and he could eat them whenever he wanted, but bugs were only fed in the afternoon, after he had a chance to nibble on some greens first. I won’t guarantee that that will make them a fabulous greens eater, but from my experience and what I’ve seen with other people, beardies seem to be much more willing to eat greens as adults if you start them as young as you can.
