she wont eat

I have a dragon that no matter what i do she wont eat. i offer her crickets, superworms, mustard greens, and collard greens. Today im going to get a better light for her basking spot and buy her something else besides what she wont eat. Any suggestions would be great thanks.

Sounds to me as if there is a problem either with the health of the lizard or with the environmental condition under which it is kept and, not a problem with the types of food being offered. My first guess would be that maybe you are not keeping the BD under the proper conditions but, this is only a guess. Why not explain your set up to include info such as: tank size, lighting supplied (type of lights used, wattage, light cycle length, etc.), heating (what temp is at the warm end of the enclosure, what temp at the cool end, how do you supply the heat), is the BD housed alone, is there anything that could be stressing it nearby and so forth.

It coud also be the health of the lizard. Is this a new acquisition or have you had it for a while? Was it eating and the stopped, or has it not eaten since you got it? Are there any signs of illness other than lack of appetite.

Give us as much information as you can, and then maybe someone can help you figure out what is wrong.

Thanks Glenn. Ive had my dragon for about 4 months, and shes 5 months old. I keep her in a 20 long with UVB and a 60 watt zoomed basking spot lamp about 4 inches away from her basking spot which puts it about 95-100. the cool end of the cage is about 80. I have the lights on a timer for 14 hours a day. She is housed alone and spends most of the day just sitting in her basking spot.

I had her on sand until about a week ago when the vet said to switch to rabbit pellets, unfortunately this enables her to bury herself under her rock and close all the holes around it. Maybe brumation but im not really sure, isn't she too young? The vet also said that she has a couple little clumps of sand in her and that i should soak her once a week and massage her belly. Since iv'e gotten her, she never really had much of an appetite, usually only eating a few of the pieces of greens and a superworm. Yesterday i gave her some red leaf lettuce, alfalfa sprouts, and raspberries and she kept licking the raspberries, and i left the room and when i came back it looked like she ate some of the alfalfa sprouts.

One more question. She will always run up my arm, onto my head, and start eating my hair. Is that normal?

Thanks for all your help.

well i have since changed the temps a little bit and put her in a bigger cage and i bought another female cagemate and since then she has been doing much better with her eating and i found something she really likes. . .LOBSTER ROACHES! well thanks for helping.

I've heard rabbit pellets are bad because the beardie can eat them and they will expand in their stomach taking up a lot of water causing dehydration. www.beardeddragon.org is a great place to get info. The safest thing for the cage is shelf liner. I keep mine on sterlized sifted play sand. If you have any questions, let me know. Thanks!

Another problem with rabbit pellets is they can harbor molds and bacteria easily.

Let face it, short of hard packed sand like they have in nature, there are pros and cons for most substrates.

We use paper towels for babies (they are not feed in the same enclosure) then as juvies we use a shelf liner on the bottom of th enclosure, paper towels folded in the poo area (they usually use that if rasied at first on paper towels, then add an area of a good quality reptile carpet for them to rest on... beardies love soft things.

once they are subadults, the get a sand box or sand pit, depending on the enclosure.

Glad she is doing better