It’s always fun to look for interesting and unusual foods to supplement your bearded dragon’s diet with, as long as you do so with care and ensure that the food addition is safe.
Having a varied diet can help to keep your bearded dragon healthy and will enrich its life with more interesting and unusual items for it to investigate – so don’t be afraid to research whether it can eat certain foods that may not immediately seem obvious.
Gathering foods from outside can be a fun activity, although you must make sure that they are clean and free from pesticides if you are going to feed them to your dragon, and it’s a good idea to wash them thoroughly before putting them in the enclosure.
Bearded dragons are omnivores, so they enjoy both animal-based foods and plant-based foods, and you should provide both to ensure that your dragon is getting a varied, nutritionally valuable diet at all times.
They enjoy being given different foods to try, and if your bearded dragon seems bored or you can’t think of new foods to give to it, try doing a little foraging in your backyard.
Have you ever wondered whether bearded dragons can eat clover? Clover often grows readily in any grassy environment and it is fairly easy to find, identify, and pick to take home to enrich your bearded dragon’s salad bowl.
Can Bearded Dragons Eat Clover?
Yes, bearded dragons can eat clover, and they will enjoy this food in most cases, as it offers a variety of nutritional benefits. It contains protein, minerals, and carbohydrates, and it is low in fiber, making it a great snack for a bearded dragon.
If you take your bearded dragon outside from time to time, it’s fine to let it roam around in the grass and nibble on clover leaves, provided you do not use pesticides in your garden (these could be harmful to your bearded dragon even in small amounts).
If you are going to pick clover and bring it inside, this is also fine as long as you have got it from a safe source, preferably not too close to a road with lots of pollutants.
Wash the clover leaves before feeding them to your bearded dragon, and make sure you moderate how many it eats. Although clover is a healthy snack when fed in small quantities, it should be seen as a treat, not as an everyday food for your bearded dragon to enjoy.
It is also important to remember that a young bearded dragon tends to eat more insects, rather than salad leaves, while adult bearded dragons consume a higher proportion of vegetables and plants.
You should therefore moderate how much clover you give to your pet according to its age and the other foods it consumes to ensure it isn’t getting too much.
What Kinds Of Clover Can Bearded Dragons Eat?
Bearded dragons should be able to eat every kind of clover there is, and this includes crimson clover, alsike clover, white clover, and red clover, as long as these come from known safe sources and they are fed in moderate amounts.
If you feed your bearded dragon a lot of one kind of clover, don’t feed it large amounts of another kind, or you could make it sick; moderate the overall quantity, rather than just one variety.
Clover can be beneficial and it helps to keep a bearded dragon hydrated, particularly during the summer, as it contains sap and moisture.
Because bearded dragons come from dry places with little fresh water available, they often depend upon plants to get moisture, and therefore they may enjoy eating clover when they are thirsty.
You can mist clover before feeding it to your dragon, or rinse it and pat it with a clean cloth, and this should increase the amount of water that it offers.
Clover also contains important plant proteins, and these are particularly beneficial to adult bearded dragons, which should get at least twenty percent of their diet from vegetable matter of some form or another.
Furthermore, clover contains calcium, which is crucial to bearded dragons, as well as magnesium and phosphorus.
While too much phosphorus can inhibit calcium absorption, magnesium can aid it, and this helps to keep your bearded dragon healthy and reduces its risk of metabolic bone disease.
How Often Should You Feed A Bearded Dragon Clover?
Clover should be regarded as a treat food, and not part of your bearded dragon’s everyday menu, so make sure you are not offering it this plant in great quantities or too frequently.
You will need to balance its diet according to its age; young bearded dragons need fewer greens and vegetables than older ones, and will usually eat less accordingly.
You should always remove uneaten clover at the end of the day, and wait at least a few days before you offer it to your pet again.
Some bearded dragon owners recommend offering the reptile some fresh greens every day, while others recommend rotating your feeding schedule (for adults) so that you give it salad one day, insects the next, nothing on the third day, and then repeat this pattern.
You will have to decide what feels right to you, but you should certainly not give your bearded dragon clover every day.
Most people recommend giving treats a couple of times a week, so you could implement this with clover, or you could just make it an occasional addition to your bearded dragon’s salad bowl. It is better to err on the side of too little (since your bearded dragon doesn’t need to eat clover) than risk giving it too much.
Conclusion
So, a quick answer to “can bearded dragons eat clover?” is that they certainly can, and they enjoy this green plant, but they should not eat it in large quantities or too frequently. Bearded dragons need to get the majority of their diet from insects, not plants, and while vegetables and green leaves are certainly important, you shouldn’t let your dragon eat all the clover it wants whenever it fancies it. This isn’t a healthy approach to feeding.
