Ever wonder how bearded dragons get shipped? Well its typically overnight, with arrival before 10am and unpacking them the next morning looks something like this…
Diamond Den
A-1 Reptiles
Fire and Ice Bearded Dragons
BloodBank Dragons
Rainbow Bearded Dragons
Carolina Classic Dragons
Off Fauna Classifieds
A bath is a great time to give your dragon some healthy skin care help. If your dragon is shedding, a great way to help ease the skin off is a nice long warm bath. This will allow your dragon a chance to shorten the time it takes to get that old skin off, and besides a good bath is always a nice treat!
This guy is definitely animated in his presentation, but has a great video none the less. While he breeds them for a different creature, the goal is still the same. Check it out!
Update: In regards to the issues with flies, we are currently experimenting with a “cleaner crew” or a separate type of insect (actually 2) that essentially clean the dead roaches and other bad stuff up. We will do an update once they establish and start producing results but we’ve heard great things about them.
Bonus Vid:
Watch these roaches destroy 5 oranges in this 2 min time lapse video. Actual time 21 mins.
Featuring some great information on the cool science behind how you can technically influence bearded dragons sex with temperature, but how it is ultimately far from a good idea. The basic premise of the article is that using temperature control, and cranking the temperatures up to dangerously high levels could consistently produce all phenotypically (how they actually appear) female hatchlings, but the process ultimately increases mortality rates and health issues.
Now you may say, well maybe you are just killing off all the males? They went on to check the eggs that were lost and many indicated they would have produced females.
The article goes on to explain how the process creates females that are genetically coded as males, even with their female sex organs. If these male coded females were to then somehow be fertile and capable of successfully producing eggs, the genetic code from both parents would be male, and thus every offspring produced will be only male.
Go find out more at the link below!
http://www.hadesdragons.co.uk/tdsr-bd.html
Hey guys, quick update!
One day old, with so much attitude!
We have added several breeders to our guide in the last few months, but we know there are other great breeders out there, and we’d like to add them to our list. Get your company or a great company you know listed here for free with a basic listing! All we need is the Company name, Location and Website.
Check the new page out here: Breeders Guide by Location
Additionally, we have decided to restructure our breeders guide in the “listed by breed types” section. Because of so many rotating inventories it has been difficult to fairly categorize a company while promising they will always have stock of that particular breed.
Look for that update next month, and in the mean time thanks for reading!
Something that isn’t always publicly discussed in the Bearded Dragon community is the ethics behind breeding, keeping and collecting dragons. Some will always argue a wild animal should be free, some believe a simple animal can be kept in a simple enclosure merely for their owners leisure and others treat their dragons like reptilian royalty.
When it comes to breeding these wonderful creatures, far too often a person starts off with ambitious desires and grandeur views but as expenses add up and time goes by they are forced to make cut backs, and effort falls off. The last thing any reasonable person needs on their conscience is the guilt of neglect. Many whom choose to breed do go on to successfully work with bearded dragons in the realm of fair ethics, but today we will focus on some of the perhaps even unknowns when it comes to breeding ethically.
This series will look at the ethics behind breeding bearded dragons and hopefully educate new dragon keepers looking to get into breeding, while adding to the bank of knowledge of those who have been breeding dragons for some time.
When it comes to properly housing your dragons, besides the absolute necessities of life that should be provided regularly, such as water and sustenance, the most important factor of life is one’s living conditions. Providing any and all bearded dragons fair space is perhaps the first challenge of ethics any new dragon keeper will face. We make recommendations for enclosure sizes for your bearded dragons in our information section, but today we are looking at the ethical approach of choosing what is right for you.
Custom built 2ft tall x 4ft wide x 18in deep Enclosure, this size is ideal for 1-2 Adult Dragons
When keeping a bearded dragon for breeding purposes, I feel often times dollar signs will blur an otherwise good person’s morals when it comes to taking proper care of your dragons. As with anything revolving morals, there is a great amount of personal opinions involved. There are a few who have extreme views on the far outsides edges of the group, but most people wall fall somewhere in the middle.
The first question one must ask when it comes to keeping dragons is, “Do I have the space and finances to achieve my goals?” As with any goal requiring expenditures, you must prepare for unforeseen expenses. sometimes people under estimate the amount of space even one mother dragon’s clutches will need. A female bearded dragon is capable of laying up to 5+ clutches of 25+ eggs. Assuming you average 20 successful hatches per clutch, that is around 100 dragons you may need the proper space for, not to mention to be capable of feeding twice daily. From experience, let me tell you the 5000 crickets you need weekly will require a fair amount of space on their own, not to mention the costs of purchasing them.
The question of what is a proper enclosure becomes complicated when you phrase it as, “Well, how much space does a dragon really need to live comfortably?” For arguments sake, lets look at what constitutes the extreme views. Someone with a conservative approach will say enough space to comfortably turn around, eat and provide a basking spot is enough. A more liberal approach would be to argue they have thousands of acres in the wild, and therefore must require huge environments to be kept in domestically.
Both have fair arguments, though I personally feel those like myself who have a greater appreciation for the gift of life in any form would lean towards the more liberal viewpoint. Reasonably a dragon should have space to eat, drink, warm up, cool down and move about in his or her enclosure, especially as an adult, and especially if this same dragon isn’t being handled outside of its enclosure regularly. The final judgement falls on you as the keeper, but please always keep in mind the necessities they need, and perhaps try and take a view from the dragons perspective. Could you be reasonably comfortable living in the enclosure you provided as a dragon?
Nothing turns me off more to the ideals of promoting the appreciation of bearded dragon keeping then seeing a breeder who only sees dollar signs. Remember every dragon needs a UVB source, heat lamp, water/food, attention and care not just sometimes, but every single day. It takes time to feed, clean and care for 20 baby dragons let alone, 60, 80 or even 100 in various sizes.
Bearded Dragon Eggs (1/2 of one clutch) (Temps @ 85F – Humidity @ 85%)
When it comes to baby dragons, we actually encourage breeders to use bins. Bins are ideal because you really do not want to overdo the amount of space given to a baby dragon. Too much space can lead to stress on the baby dragon as it becomes more difficult to hunt food. Bins are affordable, and allow you to provide multiple separate enclosures for your babies to minimize their stress and maximize their chance to successfully grow. Many who breed dragons will have a rack of bins arranged on shelving allowing for easy cleaning, feeding and care.
Bins also limit the temperature variance from one side of the tank to the other. Baby bearded dragons don’t always make the best decisions when it comes to regulating their temperatures so you don’t necessarily want to provide as cool of a “cool side” temperature level. With baby dragons, day time temps don’t need to drop below 85 degrees Fahrenheit. You will want to keep night temps up a bit as well. For these reasons, the bins should be morally fair as they aren’t long term housing and actually provide for a safer and more efficient environment for your dragons.
Be prepared, baby dragons travel in large groups!
Breeding bearded dragons certainly has its rewards, but definitely comes at a cost. Be sure you have not only the time and finances available to properly care bearded dragons, but also the space and proper housing units available.
Join us for another discussion next week, this time on the morals of pairing dragons. We will discuss the complications in breeding Silkback dragons, pairing translucents as well as touch on proper age consideration and health. May your moral compass always point north on your journey with dragons.
More information on Bearded Dragons
More on proper Enclosures and Housing
More on proper Dragon Egg Care
More on proper Baby Dragon Care
Dunner Dragons show another dimension in the bearded dragons’ line of distinguishable visual traits. This mutation has created a new line of dragons with very interesting visual characteristics.
While being a newer dragon, there is still much to learn about how this breed of dragons’ genes will pan out over the first few generations, but pretty much everything currently known about this “breed” is packed in this great article produced by the team over at Jela’s Phat Phibs.
They also produce these Dunner dragons there.
View the article at the link below.
www.JelasPhatPhibs.com/The-Dunner
Nice quick video of a guy showing off his store bought incubator and the baby bearded dragons hatching inside it!
Holli has now graduated to a 30 gallon tank with sand that provides a true cool and hot side now while we continue to rehab her back to health
Holli has been with us about 2 weeks now, and if you aren’t familiar with her story, we got in her pretty rough shape. She was extremely dehydrated, visibly malnourished and clearly in a weakened state. We cleaned her up and started her off in a 10 gallon tank. We provided her with UVB and a Heat Lamp pressed tightly to the one side and kept the temps at no lower then 85 to be sure she maintained a warm body temp. Feeding her greens, mealworms and the occasional hand fed cricket when she would eat them. She preferred the mealworms and while this isn’t a diet you typically would want for your healthy dragon, we we’re merely happy to see her willing to eat something. We have an in house mealworm farm and raise them specifically for bearded dragons in terms of gut loading and while heavier in fat then crickets, they have proved well at restoring her weight and energy.
After her initial bath in 95 degree water, we have bathed her every other day, allowing her to soak for up to 20 minutes if she decides to stay in that long. It is at this time she frequently drinks a large amount of water. We carefully observe her to be sure she doesn’t go too long, but again the consumption is encouraging. After noticing her preference for warm water, we have syringe dripped warm water daily for her to drink, only if she chooses.
We will continue to update you on Holli’s quest for health, but as of now most signs are pointing towards positive results on the horizon.
Holli, two weeks prior
A quick guide on how to raise and breeder mealworms. We breed Mealworms for our Bearded Dragons here at BeardedDragonSource.com and have compiled this video to demonstrate how easy it is to raise your own mealworms to provide an excellent treat for whatever creature you may be feeding it to.
Items needed:
About 500 Mealworms
Oatmeal
Containers (Ideally about the size of a shoebox)
Extra protein and calcium rich feeder food (optional)
Cut up potato or other water holding vegetable (optional)
Breeding mealworms takes about 14 weeks from start to finish of a new cycle.
You start by letting some of your Mealworms turn in to larvae and then beetles. After several weeks, when you get a bunch of beetles in your container you can start another fresh container and move all your beetles in to that container.
After a few more weeks those beetles will have laid eggs and most likely died. You will want to be sure you have plenty of beetles because even though every beetle lays several hundreds if not thousands of eggs, not all make it to life.
Once the beetles start dying off you may begin to notice some mealworms starting to show up. The eggs are virtually invisible to the naked eye, but you can see very small baby mealworms starting to grow.
Leave this container alone for a few more weeks and those mealworms will continue to grow into ideal feeding size. It is at this point you can let some worms continue to grow into beetles, and feed the rest to your animals.
If you set up multiple containers, you will always have fresh worms growing full size as you need them.
