Greens and Bee Pollen?

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mitchell.a.88
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Greens and Bee Pollen?

Postby mitchell.a.88 » Sun May 07, 2017 6:18 pm

Hey everyone! It's been awhile since I've been active on here. I'd like to give a good excuse like "focusing on school" or "traveling the globe in search of treasure" but that has not been the case. I'm just lazy. Now let's dive into my actual post...

A few weeks ago I got a text from a friend that said "please help them". Attached was a screenshot of a facebook post where someone was giving away 2 bearded dragons. Long story short, I now have a bearded dragon.

This bearded dragon, Sparky, was extremely sickly and thin. His growth has been stunted and his nutrition was lacking. Now that he's with me he's getting regular meals and calcium supplementation. Being a "baby" still he is eating mostly protein in the form of dubias. The greens, however, are a different story. Sparky is not a fan of anything green unless it has little roaches crawling on it. I've been trying to get him to eat his greens and nothing has really clicked yet. He will eat them occasionally. Naturally I've been trying different methods (basil, reptile "salad dressing", making them wiggle like bugs) but to no avail yet. My new plan is patience.

Until today. I attended the Wasatch Reptile Expo here in Utah. Surprisingly for our modest little show we had 2 bearded dragon breeders, which I have not seen at the show before. So of course I asked what tips they might have. One of them suggested Bee Pollen, which is apparently used as a nutritional supplement for humans. The breeder said to get picky eaters to eat their greens he buys bee pollen capsules and sprinkles the contents onto the greens.

What do you guys think of this? I naturally did a google search of my own, but I want some fresh takes on the subject. I also figured it could be a good discussion for a community that keeps other omnivorous reptiles.
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splashy07
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Re: Greens and Bee Pollen?

Postby splashy07 » Tue May 09, 2017 10:02 am

Well, the bee pollen thing is new to me so I can't comment on that one. As far as the greens I put them in a mini-processor and chop them real fine and mix with whatever dog or cat food I'm using. I've used whole peas in the mix also and they actually pick them out and eat them!
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Angcious
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Re: Greens and Bee Pollen?

Postby Angcious » Thu May 11, 2017 5:37 am

My bearded is 5 years old and I still have days where she just downright won't willingly eat greens. 
She absolutely will not eat them if they have calcium or supplements sprinkled on them, she's fine with her worms being powdered though. Some days she responds better to a whole leaf she can bite off pieces with, a few times I was lucky when I squeezed pieces of watermelon or peach juice on the greens. Sometimes I get lazy so I just shove a piece of greens in her mouth as she's eating a worm or make a hornworm clasp onto a leaf so when she grabs it, it takes the leaf with it...gosh does that make her mad lol! She will not touch the greens if she doesn't see strips of green beans (her favorite vegetable) mixed in. Yet we can go weeks without any problems eating greens at all, but the random green strikes still happen.
As far as the bee pollen...I have been using that as well as probiotics with her and my 2 bts for 2 years now. I can't attest to it helping appetites...my bearded gets picky about only the greens but has a good appetite for everything else and my bts have never had appetite problems. If anything, they'll try to convince you that they're being starved...2 hours after eating a meal.
But the bee pollen does seem to be very palatable, my bts have actually tried to eat it straight from the container. So I can imagine having it sprinkled on greens could work for some.

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