Did anyone see January's Reptiles MAg??

[Iguanalady]

There is a short piece in one of the columns answering someone's question about their female beardies aggression....

The guy writing the reply does not seem to have actual experience keeping beardies. He talks about them being highly territorial and maiming each other if kept together at all. He says that he is surprised that initially this person's beardies just squared off a bit and then accepted each other without causing serious injury. He also said if you've raised babies you will know that they fight every chance they get and you have to raise them alone or in very small groups.

Now I know that the intent was probably pure. Many newbie herpers will keep reptiles together improperly and get serious problems so I think he was trying to scare people off of keeping multiple beardies together. The statements were very extreme though and in my experience not true. Most beardies have an initial squaring off and then they settle into their pecking order and are fine. The only problems I have ever had were when two males in their breeding season were together or when an overly eager small male went after a very large female mate and she refused him a bit forcefully. Of course there is the standard mating injury from all the neck biting. As for babies I have seen territoriality but I have kept and raised 8 clutches of 25 or so each in large containers and never have any toe or tail biting except once when I followed a reptiles mag article's advice about baby beardies not needing as many crickets! Sure beardies are territorial but this article made them out as viscious beasts incapable of living together. Not only that but the sexing advice was poor. In my experience you can get a pretty good idea about the sex of a male when its a few months old by looking at the hemipenile bulges....not just a wide tail base...and females have femoral pore bumps too and as babies this is not a good sexing device. Flip a few pages and go to the vivarium article and find out that beardies are actually herbivores not omnivores. Man I think I'm going to complain to Reptiles. Don't any of their staff writers raise bearies?? All I keep seeing is innaccurate information about beardies from them!!

[eyespy]

I haven't read that magazine in years, because of similar articles with inaccurate or misleading information. Don't get me wrong, some of the articles are quite good, but others seem to be written by people who don't have any direct experience keeping the animal being discussed, as you have noticed.