What do I need to know about bearded dragons?
by Charlie on Wednesday, August 25th, 2010 | 7 Comments
I want to get a bearded dragon, but I need to know how to take care of it, what to feed it, pricing, cleaning, health problems, and anywhere I can watch videos on the bearded dragon.And finally how to convince my mom about any qualities of a beardie.
Housing:
The larger the better when it comes to enclosures for adult bearded dragons. Hatchlings can be housed in as small as a 10-gallon enclosure, but a minimum size for an adult is a 50-gallon terrarium. Rubbermaid tubs also work well for groups of young dragons. We suggest a minimum 15 gallon tall tub, with the lid turned into a screen top. Cut a large hold in the top, and use Liquid Nails to glue the screen to the plastic top. Enclosures should typically be longer than they are high. Groups of adult dragons should be housed in larger enclosures with numerous logs for basking. Glass is a great choice for display of adult bearded dragons, allowing for optimum vision and brightness, but hatchlings often do better in enclosures that limit vision. It is also thought by many keepers that dragons display better color when housed in enclosures that they cannot see out of. Please be wary of housing young females with males. Dragons may mate at young ages and run into complications with egg binding.
Substrate/cage decor:
Although sand has been used for many years, I recommend strongly to my customers to use wheat bran for bearded dragons above 6 month of-age. We suggest housing young bearded dragons on newspaper or paper towels to prevent problems with impaction. With newspaper, be aware that crickets will hide beneath the paper. We suggest that you replace the old paper with new paper nightly, allowing hidden crickets to be removed or eaten for a late night snack. Left over crickets can harm young dragons, so be careful. If there are extra crickets in the enclosure, provide them with food, so they do not nibble on your dragon at night. Basking logs should be placed within the enclosure to allow your dragon to thermoregulate and feel secure. Decorative rocks and fake plants may also help to liven up the enclosure. Do not use heat rocks. Bearded Dragons sense heat and light using a detector located on top of their heads. They are not as aware of heat coming from below and can badly burn their bellies without knowing it. For this reason we advise to not use a heat rock or place rocks too close to the basking light. Use wood logs for basking zones instead. Live plants may also be an option. (But live plants must not be toxic, as they will likely be dinner).
Lighting/heating:
Bearded dragons like it HOT! The key to heating your enclosure is providing a temperature gradient from a hot basking zone, to a cooler area. Basking temps should reach well over 100 degrees F. The cooler zone should be around 85 degrees.
The brighter the light, the better. Dragons thrive under a good full spectrum UV source. We recommend active UV/heat or mercury vapor bulbs. These bulbs work double time to give your dragon quality UV and producing heat at the same time. You may also use fluorescent UV full spectrum tubes, although they do not produce the same UV quality. The colors and health of your lizard depend on good heat, bright light and UV. Your dragon will also benefit from natural sunlight and we recommend bringing your lizard outside in an outdoor basking enclosure. However the more natural sunlight you expose them to, the less supplements you should give, especially vitamin D3 (this may also be the case when using the active UV/heat bulbs). We also think that younger dragons may become stressed when taken outside, and therefore suggest holding off on outdoor excursions until your dragon is older .
Behavior:
Bearded Dragons are generally not aggressive towards people, but will attack other dragons, and many other species of lizards, frogs, etc. Never put a small dragon with a larger one, as the small dragon may end up dinner. Beardeds tend to spend the day running from one heat zone to the next, and often searching for food. A happy healthy dragon is alert, fast, and active. Young dragons can be kept in groups without too many problems associated with stress, but older males should be kept one to a cage. Breeding groups of 1 male and 2-5 females are not uncommon. Males will aggressively bob their heads at the females, while the females will wave their arms in circles back. Males and some females will also turn their beard jet black. These are part of the breeding rituals and territorial behaviors of bearded dragons. Adult Bearded dragons enjoy basking lazily on their logs. Your dragon may "vent" (open mouth breathing) while basking, this is very normal and not a sign of distress. It is also not uncommon to find a dragon sleeping at night in what appears to be the most painful position on earth.
Longevity:
A well cared for dragon will live from 6-12 years, maybe longer. The early years of a dragons life are often the most important. A young dragon that is not properly cared for is likely to have life long lasting problems. Proper exposure to uvb, vitamins, and minerals along with a well balanced diet in every stage of a dragon’s life will help enable your dragon to have a long and healthy life.
Feeding/supplementation:
Bearded dragons are omnivorous and should feed on both vegetation and protein. Crickets, mealworms, superworms, and a salad mixture should be staple food sources. Never feed your dragon too large of a prey item. We suggest feeding prey 1/2 to 3/4 the size of the space between your dragons eyes.
Dragons require a variety of greens including collard greens, red leaf lettuce, green leaf lettuce, mustard greens, turnip greens, and dandelion greens. Stay away from iceberg lettuce, large amounts of kale, cabbage, or spinach. We also suggest a variety of vegetables such as carrots, squash, sweet potatoes, peas, corn, and fruits offered in small amounts. Other specialty additions can include cactus fruit, dandelion flowers, and hibiscus flowers. This salad mix can be offered daily using different combinations of ingredients.
When feeding crickets, make sure your source of crickets is clean. You may gutload your crickets with commercial cricket and/or we suggest offering your crickets fresh fruit, greens, and water. Remove all old food from your cricket container. Mold can be toxic to your lizards. We suggest using a moistened paper towel/sponge, citrus, or carrots to provide water for your crickets.
Whenever possible try and provide a variety of appropriate sized prey items for your dragon including super worms, silk worms, roaches, grasshoppers, preying mantis, and a variety of other bugs (not fireflies). However we strongly suggest not using bugs found outside, as they may have pesticides that can kill your dragon. Also, use waxworms in limited amounts, if at all. They contain little nutritional value, and although relished by the dragons, contain high amounts of fat.
You can also feed rep cal pellets to your dragons at a young age. The best method we have found to start dragons on the pellets is to moisten the pellets, and drop them like crickets onto a paper plate in front of the dragons. This will generally trigger a feeding response from the dragons. Generally they will only eat a couple of pellets in the beginning, but with patience and age they will start to feed heavily on the pellets. The pellets have less risk of parasites, associated with much live prey.
You can also feed pinky mice/rats to adult dragons; this is especially good for females during the breeding season.
We feed all of our hatchlings a minimum of three times a day to ensure optimum growth and health. As dragons get older, their appetite will decrease. For adult dragons, you can offer greens daily and crickets or worms 3-4 times per week. As dragons get older, you may decrease the amount of protein offered.
We suggest misting your dragons once a day, especially as hatchlings. Dragons will drink during spraying and may also be "trained" to drink and soak in a water dish inside the enclosure. They also enjoy an occasional warm (not hot) bath.
Supplementation:
There are many different and often contradictory opinions/views on supplementation. Calcium, D3, and vitamin supplementation are necessary for your dragons. However, supplementation will depend on what you feed your dragons, the bulbs you use, and how much natural sun they receive. Many sources recommend supplementing small dragons daily and decreasing to once or twice per week for adult dragons. But both too little and too much supplementation can lead to problems. Therefore, we recommend going over this with your vet to find a schedule that suits the specific needs of your dragon. We suggest you supplement your young dragons daily with a ratio of 1 part Rep-Cal Herptivite to 3 parts Rep-Cal calcium with Vitamin D3.
Diseases & Disorders:
Bearded dragons are one of the hardiest reptiles available in the pet trade, yet they still can succumb to numerous diseases and problems.
We are not veterinarians; please do not use this information as a replacement for taking your lizard to a vet. This information is meant to raise your awareness of signs and possible problems. If you notice that your lizard is ill, do not hesitate to make an appointment with a reptile specialist.
Several pointers to ensure optimal health for your lizard:
Follow all housing, heating/lighting, and feeding/supplementation requirements for your lizard.
Quarantine all new reptiles.
DO NOT HOUSE YOUR BEARDED DRAGON WITH ANY OTHER SPECIES OF REPTILE. Different reptiles come from many different environments requiring different needs in captivity. Even animals that come from similar environments can cause stress and pass parasites onto your dragon, costing the life of your lizard.
Do not house bearded dragons of different sizes together–this is a sure problem for the smaller dragons’ health.
We recommend housing males separately. You may even need to prevent males from seeing each other across cages.
Keep your cages and food CLEAN! Clean and sift poop often. Remove all old food.
Wash your hands before and after handling your lizard.
What you need to do is do a google search w/ the words bearded dragon and care sheet. There you will get many websites and it is best to view several care sheets as one may have completely different advice from another. Also youtube will have some videos of people explaining dragon care and demonstrating the set up. The care sheet above is fine but as I said, read some others as one does not always have the best or complete information. To add from some of my experience, your dragon will be eating mainly crickets when it’s young, as it gets older, it will eat about half veggies or majority veggies and the rest fruits and insects. Beyond crickets there are wax worms, superworms, silk worms, roaches etc that you can feed your dragon. You’ll want to spot clean the cage daily, ie pick up poop and clean the cage itself once a month about. Dragons can really range in price. they can sell from $20 to Hundreds. it all depends on where you buy it, from whom and the kind of morph you’re buying. common problems for dragons are impactions and Metabolic bone disease. to avoid impactions, you don’t want to give a dragon too large of food and when they are babies, you do not keep them on a bedding other than newspaper or paper towels. This is all general but here are some very good websites:
http://www.repvet.co.za/lizards/index.php
http://www.blackninjakitty.com/herps/care/troystuttlegreeniglist.htm
http://www.beardeddragon.org
In addition to the answers above, I suggest that you visit and join http://www.beardeddragon.org There are many people who can answer all your questions, care sheets, cute stories, info on health and diseases, etc etc… I am a member and all my problems they have helped me with. Plus they are very friendly, and not out for Y! points.
They will answer out of full experience as some are breeders and others have many BD’s of their own.
Handling
Gently scoop up your dragon with your hand under its belly. Dragons tend to be very trusting and will not necessarily hold on as will other lizards, so always take care to support your dragon. They do not like being firmly held; let them rest in your palm with your fingers gently curled over the back. Dragons are inquisitive animals, so create a controlled space in which it may do some exploring.
Housing
Despite their relatively modest size (adults to 20 inches [50 cm]), bearded dragons are still considered by many to be a "giant" lizard and they require generous space. As adult beardeds will cheerfully eat animals smaller than themselves, hatchlings should not be housed with juveniles or adults. Males tend to be territorial, making even 50-gallon tanks too small for them. Overcrowding, too, can lead to aggression and stress, compounded when the subordinate animal has no place to run off to hide. Such conditions also cause injuries, including lost toes and tails, and loss of appetite, not uncommon.
An enclosure should be large enough to provide a wide temperature gradient both horizontally and vertically. Beardeds can be surprisingly quick (trotting with their bodies raised well off the ground), making top-opening enclosures a must. A top to the enclosure is required; this will keep the dragon from taking off on its own and will keep the crickets inside the tank. Tanks must be well-ventilated, yet able to retain heat. Tanks with parts of their top or sides made of screen often work well. Make sure the tank top is large enough and sturdy enough to hold a full-spectrum/UV light and a fixture for supplemental heating.
There is some debate about the best substrate. In their native environment, beardeds live in sandy desert areas. Decomposed granite or large grained sand (available as playground sand in hardware stores, as well as in pet stores and nurseries) is often used, though there have been reports of intestinal impaction. Other substrates include gravel and aquarium rock (which are more difficult to clean and disinfect), outdoor carpeting (trim loose threads), butcher paper, unprinted newsprint, paper towels, and terry towels all making suitable substrates, though there is no question that the proper sand layered thickly on the bottom of the tank, with branches for climbing and basking, and rocky, ceramic, or wooden caves, and perhaps even some nonprickly succulents, make for an attractive and relatively easy to maintain vivarium. Do not use corn or walnut cob, alfalfa pellets, kitty litter, or wood shavings.
Beardeds have a very active metabolic rate, so plan on frequent cleaning. As their fecal pellets are dry and compact, if sand is used a kitty litter scooper may be used on a regular basis, with the tank undergoing a thorough cleaning and disinfecting several times a year. Regular replacement of the substrate assures the environment remains as healthy as possible for the dragon.
Beardeds need both basking and hiding areas. Ideally, the tank should be big enough to have a hiding place at both ends of the temperature gradient, plus a basking area closer to the heat source. Provide, at least, a hiding area on the cooler side, with branches and logs for climbing and basking on the warm side.
Heat
Although bearded dragons are primarily desert dwellers, they do spend the hottest part of the days in relatively cool areas; as with all desert animals, too much heat can be just as dangerous as too little.
The temperature gradient during the day should range from 76°F (24°C) on the cool side to 86°F (30°C) on the warm side, with a basking area ranging from 90°-100°F (32°-37.7°C). Nighttime temperatures can drop no lower than the low to mid 70s (21°C) on the cool side.
An undertank heating pad under the warm side of the tank will gently heat the substrate. A basking light or heating element should be positioned above so that there is a vertical gradient, with the warmest end at the top.
To give yourself as much flexibility as possible to cope easily with changing ambient room temperatures throughout the seasons, consider hooking your heating element or basking light to a thermostat. There are several models available, ranging from those that are hardwired into the tank to plug-in ones with simple dials. An even easier method is to plug the heating element or basking light fixture into a table lamp dimmer switch. Check around for a model that gives you many setting options; some have only three (off-dim-bright) which may be too limiting for your needs.
If using a ceramic heating element, you should use a porcelain light socket, as the socket part of the fixture can get very hot; the last thing you want is meltdown or fire. If using high-wattage light bulbs, make sure that the light fixture you are using is rated for the wattage of the bulb; some fixtures can safely handle bulbs up to 150 watts, which could be a problem if your bulb is over 200 watts.
Use at least th
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