What do Bearded Dragons eat? They eat a variety of foods. They might seem like little creatures but their appetite belies their small stature. You should first note that the types of foods you’ll feed a juvenile and an adult Beardie are basically the same. The only variations might be how often you’ll need to feed them and the size of the insect given since juveniles are smaller and can’t handle larger foods. One rule to remember is if the insect can easily touch from eye to eye on your Beardie, it’s too big to give to him. A good acronym to help remember what your lizard can eat is FIV or fruits, insects, vegetables.

That doesn’t mean that you can simply give your Beardie anything from either group and he’ll be fine. You cannot feed a Beardie the plant part of a tomato as it’s toxic to his system. He also cannot eat a firefly-not even a nibble- because the chemical in the firefly’s body can cause a fatal reaction in your Beardie. One of the vegetables that Beardies like but can’t handle that well is regular iceberg lettuce. Though they will gobble it right up, it can give them diarrhea.

So what do Bearded Dragons eat that you can safely give them? In the fruit category, you can give a Beardie strawberries, blueberries, grapes, and apples as long as you don’t let him have any of the seeds. With vegetables, he can handle items like squash, turnips, dandelions, broccoli or okra.

When you give your Beardie insects, make sure you do what’s called ‘gut loading’ them first in order to meet your Beardie’s nutritional needs. But he can eat insects like crickets, earthworms and mealworms. Some owners give their Beardies baby snails but you have to be very careful that the shell won’t cause him problems.