pinkies to my beardie

[chamitch]

when is it ok to feed pinkies to my beardie. i dotn plan on breedign just very nice to have frozen food and feed less. anyway


thanks

[ChristinaM]

Pinkies are not good for beardies. They have a very hard time digesting them.

If you are certain you want to feed them to your dragon, a couple things to keep in mind
- it's best if you are feeding them to a fullgrown adult dragon with a good digestive system.
- only feed one, once a month. (for the digestion reasons)

[chamitch]

ok thanks. maybe i wont

[NItrO]

Bichiraddict, who tell u that pinkies are hard to digest for the beardies?? Damn, they eat bigger thing in the nature. I think pinkies is the best thing for calcium, proteins and its the most nutritive thing for the beardies. My GF give pinkies to her 2 beardies and they like that a lot!

[ChristinaM]

I'm sure they like em, and I'm sure they do eat things bigger in nature. But the facts are, wild and captive beardies are diffrent.

Pinkies are alot harder to digest due to bones, etc. It's actually a common sense thing....what would be easier to digest? A cricket with tiny thin bones, or a pinkie with large bones(compared to a cricket).

I will dig up some links when I can. They are definately NOT the most nutritious prey for beardies, along with calcium they are VERY fattening. Like humans, beardies can become fat and have the health risks associated with it.

[eyespy]

Pinkies are the primary cause of fatty liver disease and kidney failure in captive beardies. Recent studies out of Australia where they did necropsies to analyze the gut contents of wild beardies show that juveniles ate an average of 60% of their diet as plant-based nutrition. It was 90% plant-based in adults. It is neither normal nor natural for beardies to process much dietary protein and toxic metabolites from excess protein have a way of accumulating in internal organs and causing disease.

If you are feeding one pinkie a month, that's all the animal protein and probably more than your beardie needs and you shouldn't feed any bugs or pellets that contain chicken.

http://www.wildwoodvet.com/petinfo/bearded.htm

[lizardboy007]

do not feed your beardies pinkies it causes to many problems for them and is not good for them

[chamitch]

hmm, soem people say they have never had problems feedign there beardies them. has anyoen here actually had any probs?

i wont feed them but im jsut wondering

[SteveG]

pinkies are not that good for beardies....... and when u start it's hard to feed them anything else...

[eyespy]

We see about 200 fatty liver disease deaths a year at Penn, and many of those cases involved feeding mice. I have yet to meet an owner who feeds pinkies regularly that has a beardie with normal liver function tests so "doing fine" is really just a subjective judgment by the owners with no hard facts to back it up. Every one we've tested so far has too high blood fats and too low liver functions.