Can Bearded Dragons Eat Carrots

Below is the reptile nutrition label for carrots. We created this label using information provided by the USDA and other reputable sources.

No Major Health Concerns

Carrots are fairly healthy and do not pose any major health risks for bearded dragons. They do not provide any calcium (due to having nearly the same ratio of calcium to phosphorus) so you should feed carrots with other foods rich in calcium to make sure the meal has a good balance of minerals.

There are a few different varieties of carrots you may come across at the local store. Most varieties are safe for bearded dragons to eat.

Different Colored Carrots

Carrots can come in many different colors. Fortunately, the color does not matter so you can feed orange, purple, yellow, or red carrots without concern.

Baby vs Mature Carrots

Most people may assume "baby" carrots are normal carrots harvested before maturity. This is not always the case. When mature carrots are harvested and packaged a small percentage of them become broken or damaged. Many processing facilities will recycle these damaged carrots b cutting, re-shaping, and polishing them into one or more "baby" carrots.

Fresh carrots are preferred for bearded dragons because you can visually see the entire carrot is intact and can assume the nutritional content has not been impacted from processing. Since baby carrots undergo chlorine washes and significant peeling some of the nutritional content is lost making it difficult to know their actual nutrition. Because of this we only recommend feeding your bearded dragon mature carrots and skipping baby carrots.

Carrots are safe for bearded dragons as long as they are prepared correctly. There are no major health risks with carrots so you can feed them to your beardie a few times per week.

Preparing Carrots

Wash and scrub raw carrots to remove any loose dirt and debris as well as any chemicals the carrots may have come in contact with at the store or during transportation.

Raw carrots are too hard for bearded dragons to eat whole, so you will need to grate or shred the carrot into tiny pieces or loose shreds. You can do this with a vegetable grate or cheese grate. Depending on the age of your dragon you may want to only feed a portion of the carrot, so there's no need to shred the entire carrot.

Once the carrot has be grated/shred, mix the pieces in with other foods (preferably foods high in calcium).