housing beardies together

[depressor86]

Can you house more than one female together? I'm going to get vittikins and i have a huge enclosure for them but on all the care sheets ive read i cant find anything saying if you can or cant.
i was hoping eventually to get two females and a male in my 5' x 18" x 2'
Can females be housed together?

[drewlowe]

In the books i've read and people i have talked to it is ok to house females together. As long as you don't house 2 males toghether and make sure there isn't a beardie not eating. but then again i could be wrong but from what ive learned also you may need a wider cage than 18".

[depressor86]

ive been told 18" is good for vittikins as they only get 16-18"
theyre a cross between rankins and vitticeps.

[eyespy]

Cage size sounds pretty good for female vittikins, might be a hair too short for a large adult male but that depends on how big he gets. It would be fine up until he hits sexual maturity and the resulting growth spurt at 6-10 months old so you could always save up in case you need another setup for him later.

I wasn't quite sure from your post whether you intend to keep the male in the same cage as the girls? Beardies, whether vitticeps or vittikins, should have at least 4 square feet of room per individual so the cage would be a bit cramped for 3. Anything smaller means they can't fit their full body in the various temperature zones for proper thermoregulation. Your cage is only 7.5 square feet so 2 girls are actually a bit crowded. 4x2 is a better floor plan for a pair of dragons but it's probably close enough for a pair of vittikin girls.

It's fine to house females together as long as you watch carefully for dominance/submission issues. Sometimes the submissive has too much stress and not enough nutrition and that can significantly shorten her lifespan. If one is always allowing the other to eat first, take the best basking site and is often found with the dominant dragon's forearm draped across her back that isn't good! She's basically given up her rights and is not getting her fair share. That arm thing might look like hugging but it's actually the way a dominant dragon keeps submissive ones in their place!

If there's a male in the picture that complicates things further as constant breeding pressure is another stressor that can shorten her lifespan. With a roomy enough cage and several hides in the various temperature zones it's doable but that might be tough to provide in a cage that size and still fit in your basking branches and food/water dishes. You'd also need to make sure at least one hide gives a temperature range of 100-120 degrees so the submissive dragon can digest her food properly.

Whenever you have a group cage it's a good idea to have one nice high basking branch and bulb for each dragon and separate food and water dishes to try and keep things fair. Even so, sometimes the dominant dragon becomes a tyrant and doesn't let the submissives use the stuff.

They need to be watched very carefully, so somebody should either be home almost every day or maybe you could aim a webcam and sample the pics to watch for aggression issues.

For all those reasons I keep my dragons separately and just let them run around on the floor to socialize. It's much easier to meet each individual's needs that way. I've seldom run across a dragon in a group cage that lived more than 8-10 years but I've known hundreds of dragons kept singly in a well-suited habitat that have lived 12+ years. Those from "group homes" who've lived a long life are often kept in huge outdoor enclosures where you don't have all the worries about having enough basking sites. Stress from competitors can make a huge difference but is very hard for us humans to see when it occurs. Dragons in group cages often look happy but I think the lifespan issue tells a whole other story.