With bearded dragons consistently being in the top three most commonly kept pet reptiles along with leopard geckos and corn snakes, we often see people reaching out and asking various questions about keeping a pet bearded dragon.
One of the most common types of questions that we see from the community is based on feeding bearded dragons mice of various ages so we wanted to publish this article to try and help any of our readers who are looking to feed their own bearded dragon mice.
You can usually feed bearded dragons young mice with many bearded dragons enjoying eating a mouse but the problem is that the macronutrient value of a mouse is not ideal for a bearded dragon.
Their high fat and protein content means that mice should only ever be used as a treat food for a bearded dragon or left out of their diet completely.
Many people opt for frozen mice for their bearded dragon too but fail to realize that they have to fully defrost the mice prior to feeding them to their pet bearded dragon with this commonly resulting in digestive issues.
There are also a number of other common problems with feeding bearded dragons mice that we will cover in our article below too as most experienced bearded dragon owners tend to avoid adding mice to their bearded dragon’s diet.
Can Bearded Dragons Eat Pinky Mice?
Bearded dragons can and will eat pinky mice with pinkies often being the best option for the majority of bearded dragons due to their small size and lack of fur.
Some bearded dragons will pay little to no attention to any pinkies that you try to feed them though so the personality of your pet bearded dragon and its preferred food sources will also come into play.
If you do choose to add mice to your bearded dragons diet then pinkies are definitely the best option as they are easy to find, cheap, and small.
Their small size means that they are much easier for a bearded dragon to eat without issue while also containing less calories meaning that they can be used as more of a treat food allowing you to make up the rest of the diet with other food sources.
This allows you to balance the unsuitable macronutrient ratios of pinkies with more suitable food sources to help keep your pet bearded dragon healthy.
Still, even with their low price tags, pinkies will almost always work out to be far more expensive than the more common bearded dragon food mixes that you are able to pick up without the various risks that mice can present to a bearded dragon too.
This is why the more experienced bearded dragon owners will commonly leave pinkies out of their bearded dragon’s diet as there are better options that are cheaper and readily available.
Can Bearded Dragons Eat Fuzzies?
Larger bearded dragons can usually eat fuzzies but it is more common for bearded dragons to ignore fuzzies due to their larger size and furred texture putting some bearded dragons off them.
Due to fuzzies having fur, they also present a risk of the fur causing digestive issues and blockages putting many bearded dragon owners off using them as a good source.
Due to fuzzies being slightly older mice than regular pinkies, their prices are often higher than pinkies as they require additional care and food prior to being sold as food.
As we touched on in the section above covering pinkies, there are already plenty of cheaper bearded dragon treat food options that you are able to use for your bearded dragon and with the higher price tags for fuzzies even less people tend to use them.
With fuzzies being older mice, their early fat reserves tend to have been used for their initial growth spikes meaning that their macronutrient content is very high in protein.
This can present a nutritional risk for your bearded dragon depending on what makes up the rest of its diet too so you really do have to plan out the full diet of your bearded dragon prior to feeding.
Due to fuzzies being larger and containing more calories, it can present a problem with balancing the total macronutrient intake of your bearded dragon too as it leaves you less calories available for balancing.
Can Bearded Dragons Eat Adult Mice?
Some large bearded dragons will eat adult mice but it is usually not recommended that you feed your pet bearded dragon adult mice.
Not only can they present a choking hazard for your bearded dragon but adult mice also present the largest risk of causing a blockage due to their size and fur content as well as having a poor macronutrient ratio for the needs of a bearded dragon.
Just because bearded dragons are omnivores does not mean that they can eat all meat sources with this being a common misconception amongst people new to keeping bearded dragons as pets.
The macronutrient ratio as well as the vitamin and mineral count in a bearded dragons diet has to be correct or you can risk your bearded dragon having a number of potential health problems that could otherwise have easily been avoided if you had fed your bearded dragon a well balanced food mix instead of mice.
Some bearded dragons will initially try to eat an adult mouse before eventually giving up due to the mouse being too large for the bearded dragon to swallow too.
This can often result in a waste of money as well as the mouse being wasted so you have to keep this in mind too when trying to feed your pet bearded dragon mice.
Conclusion
That brings our article going over feeding your pet bearded dragon mice and we hope that we have been able to help you understand the reasons that most experienced bearded dragon keepers tend to avoid feeding their pets mice. If you are set on adding mice to the diet of your pet bearded dragon then try to focus on the smaller options such as pinkies rather than the adult mice or fuzzies but even pinkies have disadvantages to them as covered in earlier in our article.
