Bearded dragons are omnivorous but primarily feed on invertebrates, with insects forming up 61% of their diet. But can bearded dragons eat earwigs? No, you should avoid feeding earwigs to your bearded dragons as there is a high risk of the earwigs carrying parasites or diseases that could be harmful to the health of your beardie.
More so, pesticides [1] are often used in controlling bugs and weeds. So if the earwig was sprayed with these harmful chemicals, it might be harmful to your dragon when ingested.
However, if the dragon eats an earwig from outside one time in a while, it potentially won’t be fatal.
What Attracts Earwigs In Your Home?
If your home is earwigs infested, you probably wonder what attracts them. Like most insects, the main attraction for earwigs is food, leftovers, and rubbish.
They love moisture, particularly rotting or moist wood.
They are more likely to be drawn in places of moisture and warmth, such as laundry rooms or bathrooms.
Some of the weather conditions that might probably drive them into your house are extreme cold or hot or when it is too wet or too dry outside.
Earwigs like plants. If you have a flower garden or a vegetable garden close to your home, there is a high probability of finding earwigs.
Furthermore, earwigs love camping under any item that makes the ground wet underneath. This include rocks, big toys, tarps, railroad, etc., particularly where there is nearby vegetation.
What Other Foods Should You Avoid Feeding Your Bearded Dragon?
To begin with, you should not feed glowing insects to your bearded dragon. These include lighting bugs, fireflies, or any other worms that can glow in the dark.
The chemical that makes the insects glow is very toxic to bearded dragons. Another poisonous food to your bearded friend is avocado and hence should never be fed to them.
Foods that are unhealthy but not poisonous to the bearded dragons include; spinach and lettuce. Although healthy, spinach makes calcium bind to it during digestion, making it more challenging for your dragon to digest.
On the other hand, lettuce consists mostly of water and has no nutritional value; hence should be avoided as much as possible.
What Are The Best Insects To Feed Your Bearded Dragons?
Bearded dragons are known to devour almost any insect that comes across their eyes. Insects are an essential part of the diet of a bearded dragon, particularly younger dragons that require a massive amount of proteins for optimal growth.
Therefore, it is vital to ensure that your bearded dragon is eating the right type, species, and several insects to remain healthy.
Now that we have seen some of the insects you should avoid feeding to your bearded dragons, what are some of the favorite and healthy insects for your dragons?
When it comes to delicious insects for your bearded dragons, you won’t go wrong by providing them with cockroaches, butter worms, soldier fly larvae, earthworms, Dubia roaches, super worms, red worms, locusts, moths, dragonflies, mole or sand gropers crickets, silkworms, and black house spiders.
Generally speaking, you can try them on any insects as long as no pesticides have been sprayed on them.
When feeding insects to your pet, let it eat as many as possible within fifteen minutes. After that, take the remaining uneaten insects and keep them for another feeding.
If you leave them for longer, you will be risking the dragon overeating or the insects hiding or burrowing into an enclosure.
Summary
We would not recommend feeding earwigs or other wild bugs to your dragons as they might have been sprayed with pesticides that could harm your pet.
Instead, you should go to the pet store and get crickets and other favorite insects such as wax worms. Also, ensure you feed your bearded dragons with a variety of veggies and fruits so that they get the nutrition they require for healthy growth.
My name is Brad and I am the main editor of BeardieZilla.com.
The only goal of this site is quite simply to be able to help you. To help you by the means of my experiment, of the relation which I maintain with my bearded dragon as well as some of my knowledge about beardies.
I hope that you will find answers to some of your most pressing questions here.
Thank you for stopping by and enjoy the blog!
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