Can Bearded Dragons Eat Raisins? (Read First)

Raisins make a wonderful, tasty treat due to their sweet and sugary taste and this means bearded dragons will generally eat as many as you put in front of them.

But can bearded dragons safely eat raisins? Or should you be replacing them with healthier options?

In this post, we will take a close look and see if raisins should be on the menu for your beardie or if you should be looking to replace them with a healthier choice.

To do this, we will use the research and opinions of nutritionists and vets so you have all the information you need before adding raisins to the salad bowl.

So can bearded dragons eat raisins? Bearded dragons can eat raisins according to some experts, however,  we wouldn’t recommend it. Raisins contain high amounts of sugar as well as a poor phosphorus to calcium ratio. If you really want to offer your bearded dragon a treat we believe there are much better options.

Read on to discover…

• 5 fruits recommended by vets for bearded dragons
• The health benefits and potential concerns of feeding raisins to your bearded dragon
• How often to feed raisins to your beardie?
• How to prepare & offer raisins to your beardie

Raisins | Nutritional Info

When deciding if food such as raisins is are going to be a healthy choice to add to your beardies salad bowl, one thing we recommend doing is checking out a table of nutrition for that food.

This will give you a quick overview of the key nutrients so you can quickly determine if it’s something that you can feed them regularly or just as a treat.

The main things to look out for are fat, protein, fibre, sugar, calcium and the calcium to phosphorus ratio (which we will cover shortly)

In this post, we have added a table containing the key nutrients for raisins and as we go through the post we will point back to the table and state whether certain levels of nutrients are either good or bad for your beardie.

Check out the table with key nutrients for raisins below…

Source:

Can Bearded Dragons Eat Raisins? (More Info)

Bearded dragons can safely eat raisins as they aren’t toxic according to veterinary experts such as VCA-Hospitals who added raisins to their list of safe fruits for bearded dragons.

This, however, doesn’t mean that raisins are a good option to add to your beardies salad bowl on a daily basis.

Dried fruits are notorious for being high in sugar and raisins are no different.

We wouldn’t recommend feeding raisins to your beardie as we believe there are much better options as both staple and treat foods.

(Later in this post, we will take a look at 5 great fruit alternatives that experts recommend)

If you are adamant that you want to feed your beardie raisins then it’s highly recommended to feed them on rare occasions and in very small quantities.

Now let’s take a look at the nutritional benefits and disadvantages that raisins offer…

Are There Any Health Benefits to Bearded Dragons Eating Raisins?

Even though raisins aren’t known as a particularly healthy choice of food for beardies, they do offer some good nutrients are beneficial to their health.

Raisins are actually very high in dietary fibre and medical news today points this out as one it’s key benefits.

Looking at the table above, you can see that raisins do actually contain a large amount of fibre (3.7g per 100g)

Fibre has many roles throughout the body including improving bowel health. Source:

This can be great even for bearded dragons to aid digestion and even help with impaction issues.

Are There Any Disadvantages to Bearded Dragons Eating Raisins?

Even though we just mentioned how raisins offer a healthy amount of fibre, you still need to be cautious before adding them to your beardies diet as they do contain either high or low amounts of nutrients that can be a concern.

Let’s now take a closer look at the reasons why you need to be cautious before adding raisins to your bearded dragon’s diet…

Raisins Are Very High In Sugar

As we mentioned earlier in this post, dried fruit such as raisins are often extremely high in sugar.

Raisins contain as much as 59.19g of sugar per 100g. Healthline singled out the fact that raisins are very high in sugar in a recent article they wrote about the health benefits of raisins.

To put this in perspective, when you compare the sugar content or raisins to that of another fruit such as strawberries which only contain 4.89g per 100g so can there is a huge difference.

You can find out if strawberries are safe for your bearded dragons to eat and how often we recommend you add them to their diet in our strawberries for bearded dragons guide here…

Feeding foods that are high in sugar too often to your beardie can have a negative effect on their health both short and long term.

The most common effects are…

• Upset stomach/diarrhoea
• Obesity
• Tooth decay  

For this reason, it’s important to strictly limit the number of raisins you offer to your bearded dragon as the sugar content is extremely high.

Raisins Have an Unhealthy Calcium to Phosphorus Ratio

A healthy ratio of calcium to phosphorus is 1:1 or 2:1 (which basically means that bearded dragons ideally need to consume 2 parts calcium to 1 part phosphorus throughout their diet)

As you can see from the table above, raisins contain 50mg of calcium and 101mg of phosphorus per 100g which is totally out of balance.

This ratio is important because phosphorus stops calcium from being absorbed in the body and bearded dragons need to consume and absorb high amounts of calcium in their diet on a daily basis.

Without high amounts of calcium in their diet, bearded dragons would struggle to move freely and begin to suffer from problems such as ‘metabolic bone disease’ or MBD.

In fact, Vetstream state a lack of dietary calcium is one of the leading factors for beardies suffering from MBD.

If you are at all confused about calcium and the role it plays in your beardies health then we recommend you check out guide that explains all you need to know as an owner in under 5 minutes…

How Often Can Bearded Dragons Eat Raisins?

As we already mentioned, many top experts such as VCA-Hospitals list raisins on their ist of safe and acceptable foods for bearded dragons, however, there’s a lot to consider before you feed them to your beardie.

The fact that they are so high in sugar and offer a poor calcium to phosphorus ratio means we honestly wouldn’t recommend feeding them to your beardie.

There are just so many better fruit and treat options out there and we would encourage you to feed those instead.

If, however, you really want to feed your beardie raisins then we would recommend offering them no more than once every couple of months and in small quantities or around 2-3 raisins.

To find some more nutritious foods that bearded dragons can eat, we recommend heading over to the post below…

• Check Out Our Bell Peppers Post Here…
• Check Out Our Carrots Here…

How to Prepare Raisins For Bearded Dragons?

We sometimes like to do a bulleted list that shows each step of preparation but with raisins, there is basically no preparation needed.

Most foods will either need washing, cooking or slicing into smaller pieces before you can add them to your beardies salad bowl.

With raisins, this simply isn’t the case and they can be added to the bowl straight out of the packet.

Remember what we have said earlier in the post, only feed on rare occasions and in very small quantities if at all.

5 Healthy Fruits That  Bearded Dragons Can Eat Instead Of Raisins

It can be difficult to give your beardie a treat is still healthy enough for them to eat on a semi-regular basis.

For this reason, we have done some research and put together a list of 5 fruits that experts recommend you feed to your bearded dragons.

Remember that these fruits are to be used in moderation and not to be substituted for leafy greens and veggies.

These fruits will, however, provide variety in the salad bowl and add some other key nutrients and antioxidants in their diet.

The 5 fruits that experts recommend are…

• Figs
• Dates
• Apricots
• Raspberries
• Strawberries

If you want to find out how often we recommend feeding your beardie other fruit such as blueberries and how to easily prepare them then check out our easy to follow post on blueberries here…

To make things even easier and more visual, we have put these 5 fruits into a table containing their nutritional data.

You can check out the 5 fruits side by side here…

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