Mazuri Omnivore Diet for Beardies?

Hey,

I feed some of my skinks mazuri omnivore diet mixed with a few other things and it seems to me that the diet of beardies is similar (albeit more veggies as adults than skinks). Has anyone tried this diet out with their bearded dragons? Granted I don't think that I would want this as a staple but just to add some variety to the already included squash and greens?

Here's a link to the nutritional information.

http://www.mazuri.com/PDF/5635.pdf

There's quite a bit of protein in it and not much calcium. It looks similar to the bearded dragon pellets that zoomed sells.

http://www.drsfostersmith.com/produc...fm?pcatid=6452

Thoughts?

i am a firm believer not to give pelleted or premade diets to dragons. For one most dragons wont event look at it let alone eat it. plus you have no clue what is actually in it with the food coloring and additives that is put in everything.

I would avoid this diet. It appears to be designed for mammalian omnivores based on the example animals, no birds or reptiles listed. Also, one of the top ingredients is porcine meal which probably isn't the best main ingredient for bearded dragons. If you want variety and pellet food, try Rep Cal. We supplement our dragons' primary diet of feeders and veggies with the Rep Cal pellets to give them as much variety as possible. Some love them, some don't, and a few will only eat certain colors (flavors?). You can get a large breeder bag size similar to Harland or Mazuri. Not a good primary food source like you mentioned but it's great for variety and supplementation.

Originally Posted by Jabberwocky Dragons

I would avoid this diet. It appears to be designed for mammalian omnivores based on the example animals, no birds or reptiles listed. Also, one of the top ingredients is porcine meal which probably isn't the best main ingredient for bearded dragons. If you want variety and pellet food, try Rep Cal. We supplement our dragons' primary diet of feeders and veggies with the Rep Cal pellets to give them as much variety as possible. Some love them, some don't, and a few will only eat certain colors (flavors?). You can get a large breeder bag size similar to Harland or Mazuri. Not a good primary food source like you mentioned but it's great for variety and supplementation.

Thanks for the reply Brian,

I had looked at both Rep Cal and Zoomed and neither one really seemed to be all that good or at least not better/worse than other pellet based diets. Even in Rep Cal "poultry meal" is a top ingredient. I think these kinds of ingredients (pig/poultry meal etc) are put in to increase the protein content of the foods. I do wonder how bearded dragons do when they are raised on these types of diets. The top ingredients are wheat/corn in most of the pellets that people feed to dragons which have very poor nutritional content in general and are not natural food sources. My dragons do just fine on the squash/greens/roach diet that they are on but I do like to throw stuff in there to change it up a bit every now and then.

Mazuri is an excellent product. I would mix up my dragon's diet and offer it now and then, either directly, or fed to crickets/roaches(then fed out to your dragon). Variety is always best.

Josh

I do wonder how bearded dragons do when they are raised on these types of diets.

I'm not sure either. It waves red flags to me that the Mazuri isn't formulated specifically for bearded dragons or reptiles. I don't think it's likely that the proper nutrition content for a bear(one of the listed example animals on the website) is similar to that of a bearded dragon. I don't think there's any satisfactory pellet diets out there now to raise bearded dragons on now but like Josh said above, it's good for variety. My guess is no one raises their bearded dragons on these as a staple. We prefer the roach and greens diet also with various other feeders as supplements.

Reptiles, especially bearded dragons are still so new, that we still don't know what they really need in their diet. In the wild, they are eating all kinds of stuff, including other lizards, small beetles, and scorpions. None of these have been formulated into any of the bearded diets out there. Our only option for now is to try and cover all the bases, but of course, not over do it....Moderation

Josh