Can Bearded Dragons Eat Mango? | Full Owners Guide

Bearded dragons often love to eat juicy and sweet fruit such as mango. 

But can your bearded dragons actually eat mango safely? Or should you be feeding them other fruits and greens instead?

Let’s take a look at the advice of vets and reptile experts to see if mango is either on or off the menu for your bearded dragon.

So can bearded dragons eat mango? Bearded dragons can eat mango safely. Mango should be offered to your bearded dragon occasionally as part of a balanced diet as it contains high amounts of sugar and is also low in other nutrients such as calcium.

Read on to discover…

• Nutritional information for mango
• How often to feed mango
• How to prepare mango
• The benefits and possible concerns of feeding mango
• 5 other fruits options that reptile experts recommend instead of mango

Nutritional Information For Mango

Understanding the nutritional information of mango will help you to decide if it’s a food that you want to feed to your beardie or not.

Important things to look out for are the level of protein, fat, sugar, calcium as well the ratio of calcium to phosphorus (we will talk more about this later in the post)

Take a look at the table below that we have taken from the US Department Of Agriculture.

Can Bearded Dragons Eat Mango (A Deeper Look)

At the top of this post, we stated that mango is safe for bearded dragons to eat. 

This is backed up by various reptile nutritionists and experts such as VCA-Hospitals who included mango on their list of safe fruits in a recent article.

Even though mango is deemed safe for your bearded dragons to eat, like most fruits it has to be used in moderation.

Let’s dive deeper and take a look at both the benefits and possible concerns of feeding mango to your bearded dragon.

Benefits Of Bearded Dragons Eating Mango

Even though mangos are considered safe to eat, to be honest, there aren’t many actual health benefits of feeding it to your beardie when compared to staple greens and veggies.

Having said this, there’s one way you can use fruit such as mango to your advantage.

Bearded dragons usually love the smell of fruit such as mango and it’s sweet and juicy taste is also more appealing than veggies and greens.

If your beardie has been off their food or is simply a fussy eater of greens then you can add mango as a salad topper to encourage them to wander over to the bowl and eat.

If you chop the mango up into small enough pieces then they will often pick up other healthier greens at the same time without noticing.

It’s not a good idea to do this daily for months on end, however, doing this for a week or so can get a dragon into the habit of eating veggies and greens from their bowl.

If your bearded dragon isn’t eating or has a low appetite then we recommend heading over to this post that shares the 9 reasons why your bearded dragon isn’t eating.

Concerns Of Bearded Dragons Eating Mango

Just like with any fruit, there are concerns of overfeeding mango to your beardie.

Let’s breakdown the main health concerns of overfeeding mango.

Sugar Can Be a Problem

Mango is high in sugar and this can have many negative effects on your bearded dragon if they consume it too often.

The first and probably most obvious one is that they can become obese. 

Bearded dragons can actually become obese from eating fruit if it’s a daily part of their diet.

The high amounts of sugar can also give them digestion problems such as stomach ache and diarrhoea.

This, in turn, can cause your dragon to become dehydrated and unwell in other areas.

Eating fruit certainly has its place in a bearded dragons diet and mango is by no means any higher in sugar than most other fruits but it also needs to be offered in the correct proportions.

Excess sugar can also be a problem for your bearded dragons teeth. Plaque can easily build up and cause tooth decay just like it can on our teeth.

This can pose an even more serious problem to your beardies though as their teeth are wired directly into their jaw and infections and inflammation can cause greater problems numerous trips to the vets.

Calcium Is Vital For Bearded Dragon

Another concern with overfeeding mango or most fruits for that matter is that it’s low in calcium.

Calcium is vital to your bearded dragon’s health and offering a diet of foods that are naturally high in calcium is critical to their long term health.

Pet-MD clearly state that offering foods that are nutrient-poor will ultimately end up causing serious health issues such as MBD (metabolic bone disease)

If you are unsure on how calcium affects your beardies health then we recommend you head on over to our complete guide to calcium for bearded dragons.

Unfortunately, fruits such as mango, although safe to eat, offer little to no calcium and are therefore taking up room in your beardies stomach that could be used by foods that are rich in calcium and other nutrients.

Something else worth mentioning is that bearded dragons should also have more calcium in their diet than phosphorus.

If your beardie is typically getting more phosphorus than calcium then the calcium they do consume don’t get absorbed and they can suffer from serious health problems.

The optimal ratio is considered to be either 1:1 or 2:1 in favour of calcium.

If you look at the nutritional data in the table we provided above, you can see that mango actually has more phosphorus than calcium so it’s not good to feed on a regular basis.

Even though dietary calcium is highly important for your beardie it’s also recommended by Tax Vet Pets and many other veterinary experts that you supplement with calcium too.

You should always use a brand that’s trusted as the quality is vital with calcium supplements.

Rep-Cal would always be our recommendation for a calcium supplement. We’ve written a post that shares why we recommend this brand and why it’s the best option by far.

Can Baby Bearded Dragons Eat Mango?

Baby bearded dragons are safe to eat mango just like adults are.

This being said, the concerns we raised about overfeeding mangoes above are even more important for baby beardies.

Because baby dragons are growing bigger almost every day, their need for nutrient-dense foods and high amounts of calcium is even greater.

It’s even more important not to fill a baby beardies stomach with food that isn’t going to help them grow.

Of course, you can offer mango and other fruits as a treat from time to time but it’s important to know that the first 16-24 months are the most vital as far as their diet is involved if you want then to grow big, strong and healthy.

We decided to research how fast bearded dragons actually grow and put the data we collected in tables and charts for you to check out here.

Should Bearded Dragons Eat Mango Every Day?

Bearded dragons shouldn’t eat mangoes on a daily basis. As we mentioned earlier in this post, this is due to the fact that mango is high in sugar and low in nutrients such as calcium.

So iff bearded dragon shouldn’t eat mango every day, then just how often should they eat it?

Well, there isn’t strictly any definitive answer to this question but we would recommend your bearded dragon should be fine to eat mango around once a month as a treat.

The portion size should be small and served with other healthy greens or veggies or ideally used as a salad topper.

How Should Bearded Dragons Eat Mango?

Whenever we talk about foods to serve or prepare for your beardie, we first talk about where you get them from.

We always recommend choosing an organic option if there’s one available.

We understand that sometimes this isn’t possible but it’s certainly worth paying the extra money to know that the fruit is pesticide and herbicide-free.

When it comes to actually preparing it for your dragons then cutting the mango up into very small chunks is the best.

This will allow them to eat the fruit much more easily as well as making it more likely that they can pick up other greens and veggies at the same time without knowing.

Apart from that, there’s isn’t much more to worry about with mango. It’s a pretty straightforward fruit to add to the salad bowl.

5 Fruits For Bearded Dragons to Eat Instead of Mango

Ok, so we’ve established that mango is safe to eat for bearded dragons and backed this up by sourcing the information given by vets and other experts.

We’ve also looked at why mango isn’t good food to feed to your beardie on a regular basis when compared to staple greens and vegetables.

We’ve also done some research and found that while fruit, in general, isn’t recommended on a regular basis, there are some fruits that are more highly regarded than others.

VCA-Hospitals have provided a list of their most highly regarded fruits and we have taken 5 of those fruits and put them in a handy table below.

The table includes the most relevant nutritional information for the 5 fruits. 

Please remember that greens and veggies are on the whole better for your dragon than the fruits in the table but they will give you a good idea of fruits to offer as treats.