to beard or not to beard?

[slitherchick]

i'm going crazy, i SWEAR. a couple months ago i decided i wanted to acquire a reptilian confidante... so i've been busy researching, and have decided that i want a bearded dragon.

yet, everywhere i turn, the information i'm reading seems to contradict itself and the thing i read just before it. one care sheet says i should buy a 65 gallon aquarium for a bearded dragon, another says 20 gallons would be fine. and do i buy an aquarium, or one of those open air meshy dealies? and just HOW many crickets am i supposed to feed it? petsmart messed me up, i'm never going onto that website again. it fed me useless lines of crap about how bearded dragons ate mostly veggies... bah. BAH TO PETSMART. and then, another website was telling me the EXACT opposite. i don't know what to do!!!! i'm still interested in owning a bearded dragon. but i'm going crazy. if there's anyone out there that could offer me any tip/hints/sanity whatsoever, PLEASE!!! HELP!!!! To make matters worse i can't seem to find a breeder in my area that has bearded dragons available, or even somewhat available.

help me

my email is killermeow@hotmail.com... and i would honestly appreciate ANY help any of you could toss my way. i'm a little in the dark.

[doenoe]

hello slitherchick,

here is the stuff i know about beardies:
* each beardie needs 4 square feet of room to walk around in.
* i would go for an aquarium type enclosure, i have heard they can rub their noses against the mesh and hurt themselves. Im not sure about that one though.
* young beardies will have a diet based on insects and while they get older, they will consume more veggies. So petsmart wasnt way of there.
* when they are young, you can feed feed them alot of crickets. As much as they can consume in 10 minutes. And that 2 or 3 times a day. But you always need a plate of veggies in the enclosure, no matter what age they are.

And you can feed other feeders then crickets offcourse, but someone else has to tell you about those. Im pretty sure there is some one out there that knows more about this then me.
Well i hope i helped you out a bit. Good luck with you search for info
Greetz Daan

[Adria]

I don't exactly know what size of tank my beardie is in- but it is pretty big. They eat salad and insects- crickets and mealworms mostly.

[eyespy]

Those mesh cages aren't too very practical for beardies. If the mesh is a nylon fabric, it's soft enough for beardie claws and crickets to chew/tear through. If it's a metal screen mesh, toes and claws often get torn off when the dragons try to climb it. Beardies don't regenerate lost digits like toes or tails, so there's just an increased injury/infection risk.


Besides that, they don't hold in heat very well. I do use those mesh Reptariums for the rescues I take in, because I take in new animals almost every Saturday and need cages that are easy to set up, tear down, and disinfect. But I am constantly replacing the screens, they don't hold up for very long. So they aren't nearly as inexpensive to use in real world condtions as those info sites on the pet store chain websites would have you believe.

Besides that, they don't hold in heat very well. For my own pets I use wooden enclosures with sliding glass panels in the front. Depending on the size of the cage and whether it's near the air conditioner or the baseboard heater, I need a 40 to 60 watt bulb to heat the entire tank.

For the Reptariums I need a 160 watt mercury vapor bulb, plus sometimes another 40 to 75 watts of supplemental heat during cold weather.

The electric bill alone makes mesh impractical for beardies unless like me you are only keeping them while they are recovering from surgery so the cage isn't set up for very long.

[eyespy]

PetsMart's discussion of dragons eating mostly veggies is actually rather new on their site, and inspired by studies that have been coming out of Australia in dribs and drabs since the late 1960s. Analysis of the gut and feces contents of wild beardies reveals that they do eat primarily plant-based foods excepting shortly after the rainy season during their first year of life. That's when most hatchlings are born in the wild and insects are more plentiful. By the time hatchlings are just a few months old, prey becomes scarce as conditions tend to be very dry in most of their natural territory. Dandelions and acacia are their major staples most of the year.

It's both natural and healthy not to go too bug heavy. In captivity most keepers tend to really overdo the bugs and our beardies end up with fatty liver disease from getting too much fat and protein and not enough soluble fiber. That's an incurable condition that is eventually fatal.

Good sources of insect nutrition include crickets, roaches, grasshoppers, silkworms, butterworms, superworms and hornworms as staples. These are all relatively low in fat and high in moisture with a decent hit of nutrition. I feed hatchlings 2 or 3 insect feedings a day and slowly taper off so that they are on primarily salads and Rep-cal bearded dragon pellets by the time they are 18 months old.

Mealworms should never be given to dragons under 12 inches total length in my opinion. Even when freshly molted, their bodies still have enough chitin to cause impactions and I've assisted in a lot of surgeries to remove them from the small intestine. They are a pretty rotten source of nutrition anyway and have too little moisture and protein while too much fat and indigestible chitin and other hard exoskeletal substances.

Here's my favorite food chart as to what ingredients are good to use for salads, and how often they should have them. Yes, it's written for iguanas, but bearded dragons have nearly identical needs when it comes to the plant-based part of their diet:

http://www.greenigsociety.org/foodchart.htm

[slitherchick]

you guys are AWESOME!

[meow_mix450]

slitherchick
I was in your postion one time. I went to all these sites and they gave me all different answers. But one mistake i did was that i got one from a pet store, and it was on sale and there was one left in the cage so i bought, thought it was healthly and everything. 3 weeks later it died. So my point is if you plan to get one. Get it from a breeder, and not long ago i got another one from a breeder and now hes all healthy and eating right, thanks to some of these threads and eyespy, if u dont have a breeder around u got to the next show they have great beardies there, and there around 50-60 dollars. a lot cheaper then pet stores.

But i would get a 65 gallon tank if you plan to keep him for a very long time. Cause i heard they can grow up to a feet.(i use a 65 gallon) and its working great for me. i have drift wood in there, and i use sand as substrate, i kno its not a great thing cause they can get some and cause internal problems, so whens it feeding time i put him in another tank and throw in crikets.(its working great for me)

When i first got it ate and then it stoped eating for 2 days and would eat less everyday, but once he settled in for a while hes back to him self and started eating everyday 2-5 crikets in the morining and 2-5 at night. I usually get $5.00 worth of crikets so 50-100 crikets. i dust them everyday since hes still little.

Whatever i said here is in my opinion and what i have experienced, i tell my mistakes so you wont do the same. hope it helps

[raebug2000]

w w w . k i n g s n a k e . c om ( with no spaces of course ) is a good website to find beardies and there are breeders in this forum too.

[Pia]

Hi slitherchick. I agree, there is a ton of conflicting information out there on bearded dragons and other reptiles. I find the best sources for accurate information are up to date books (written in the last couple of years) and established reputable breeders. Websites like this are also helpful for asking questions and sharing ideas and experiences with other owners. As for the size of enclosure, a 20g would be ok for a young dragon up to about 6 or 7 inches long. A 4ft by 2ft enclosure is the minimum recommended size for an adult. I would start out with the full size enclosure right off the bat, it saves you having to buy two set ups as it grows and they do grow fast, reaching most of their adult length (usually 18-20 inches) in the first year. The only drawback is that sometimes a small dragon will have trouble finding food in this large of space. This can be solved by putting it in a smaller container like a rubbermaid or small aquarium for feeding. I would stay away from mesh enclosures because, as mentioned already, it is hard to keep the temperatures up, some are not very stable and provide little protection from other household pets like cats and dogs, and I have been told that depending on the mesh used, the visibility is poor. Bearded dragons are omnivores and when young eat mostly crickets and worms with small amounts of vegetables, but as they get older they eat fewer of these and a lot more vegetables.

I have a two year old male dragon. He lives in a 5ft by 2ft by 2ft melamine enclosure. The top is screen and the front is two sliding glass doors. There is a 8in by 12in vent on each end to help with air circulation. I have a 4 ft Reptiglo 8.0 fluorescent light (only available at pet stores-don't use lights from the hardware store-they don't have the proper uva/uvb rays) and a heat lamp with a 100w bulb. For the substrate I use Eco Earth coconut bark bedding (available at most pet stores). I recently switched from silica sand because I was concerned about impaction issues (see previous posts on this forum). I started him out on veggies at about 9 wks old and he has gradudually increased his intake since then. Now he eats lots of vegetables everyday with crickets or worms every other day with calcium and vitamin supplements. He grew to almost 19 inches in a little over a year and has filled out alot more over the second year.

I hope this was helpful and not too long. Bottom line on beardies IMHO, they are awsome creatures and are definitely the way to go if you want something you can handle. If you have more any questions, there are lots of helpful people here and if you want a good book, get "The Bearded Dragon Manual", it covers just about everthing. Let us know if you get one :-).