Approximate Size?

[maverickgtr]

Can anyone give me an approximate size of a one year old bearded dragon? Our bearded dragon seems quite small for his age (1 year) and I feel like I'm underfeeding him, he just eats and eats his greens and crickets but always leaves greens in his bowl and crickets in his tank. I'm getting a scale this weekend to accurately weigh him, but when we measured him he was one foot long including his tail. He was the runt of his litter though so I don't know if this has anything to do with it.

He's a voracious eater and loves dusted food to non-dusted food but he's still just a little guy... We're using a multivitamin we were told had enough calcium that we didn't need a calcium supplement and have been feeding him high calcium foods as well but we got a calcium with d3 supplement we're going to start alternating with his multivitamin so he gets each at least once a day. He's grown significantly in the past month and half or so but I'm still really worried. He has UVA & UVB lights and a heating lamp and multiple basking places at different levels so he can regulate his temperature. He's in a 40G breeder right now. He doesn't act sick or as if anything is wrong. He's just little... He's a Sandfire x Giant German Citrus, and we've seen a couple from his litter that are at least 2-4 inches bigger than he is.

[AkHerps]

It would be good to feed crickets in a separate enclosure, it's a lot easier.

How many circkets did you feed as a baby?

Are you sure he's a boy? How old is he?

My male beardie is I think about 20 inches long, he's about a year old, as a baby he was eating almost 60-80 small Turk roaches a day.

[maverickgtr]

Well I say "he" but really he's unsexed, but the breeder suspected he was a male and as he gets bigger, he's getting the pores on his legs like I've seen on sexing websites that say male. He's one year old; his clutch was hatched last June.

As a baby he was eating about maybe 20 small dusted crickets a day but always loved greens more than his crickets. And he wouldn't always go for the crickets. Some days when offered he'd just leave them, eat a couple, then leave them alone til the next day and then he'd eat some more. Other times he'd eat most of them, then leave like 5-10 and just kind of munch on them over a day or so. But over that same time he'd eat dusted dandelion greens just fine and clear his bowl of those.

Unfortunately, at this time we don't have room to put him in a different tank to feed him crickets because our apartment is quite small and has a husky that likes to eat anything smaller than he,r so we have to keep all reptiles in our room and our husky out, even though the husky loves to just lay in our room, so it's a little crowded... We're moving to a bigger apartment in December so I'll definitely feed him crickets in a separate tank then!

[AkHerps]

I just feed mine in like a rubber made shoe box, haha well not anymore, I tong feed him roaches now.

If he's on your arm, and you lift up his tail, you'll usually see two pretty distinct bulges and pores on his back legs, which means he's definitely a male.

12 inches is pretty small for a beardie, being the runt, and not getting a ton of protein because he wasn't a big fan of crickets may have to do with his small size.

Small size doesn't really mean bad health though, my Yoshi boy is huge, but the female we have that is pretty old is tiny, maybe about 12 inches, but she's got good weight and eats roaches like a beast

[maverickgtr]

Lol I suppose I could feed him in critter carrier we used to move him in but even though he fit perfectly in it with room to move around, he now barely fits! I'll try taking him out of the tank in a large tupperware box [college apartment so me and my roommates have lots of very large tupperware for getting lots of food when we go home lol].

When we lift up his tail to check, every time he just attempts to take off. Apparently it's his "Go Baby Go" button or something. lol But we can't really discern bulges or the dimple for a female. So far we've just chalked it up to him being so little, but there's some rather distinct pores on his back legs.

He readily eats, and rarely refuses food, he just doesn't eat that much of it. I've tried only putting little bits of food in his bowl throughout the day so it wouldn't go bad to see if that was it but he'll still leave some of it sometimes. He's started eating more crickets lately and has been growing like crazy now so I've been trying to keep crickets in his tank for when he feels like a snack. It seems like he likes to graze throughout the day rather than just eat a lot all at once. When I get him crickets he'll eat a good amount at first then go bask and randomly jump down on them to grab a quick cricket or two.

Thanks for all your help!

[AkHerps]

Do you feed anything else like mealworms or superworms?

[maverickgtr]

We got him freeze dried mealworms and he loves those but I've heard it should be more of a treat then a meal so I give a good amount of them to him like once a week. We've looked at superworms but he's still too small for them. I was thinking about getting him some freeze dried crickets as well since I think he likes not having to chase the mealworms and it would give him more protein.

I measured him again today almost a week since we last measured him and he grew a full inch! Possibly more since he was kind of scrunched up and glaring at us lol

[maverickgtr]

We weighed him today and he's 100.5 grams.

[AkHerps]

I don't think he'd be too small for superworms, a little leopard gecko I used to have could down them and adult dubia roaches, and a female fire skink about 7 inches I had could down superworms too. They just crunch them up and it may be a good extra source of protein.

Superworms also come in smaller sizes, and they grow pretty slow.

Large amounts of mealworms can be bad for babies, because they have more shell to meat ratio, but they are okay to feed adults.

I usually make a salad, put a few supers and mealworms in with the salad and stick it in a dish the mealies cant crawl out of and it's like a nutricious buffet

Also, sand is not good for young Beardies, they have been known to injest it accidentaly and on purpose and become impacted. If you feed in the tank live bugs on the sand, you want to stop that and feed in separate container. Even the calci sand does not break down in the animal like it says on the bag. Very dangerous stuff. Best to go with tile, paper towels, or reptile carpet and wait until they are a full adult to give them sand.

Or for my stupid Beardie, no substrate, he eats the paper towels, his fake plants, and chews on his rocks after I wash them...He really is a very special big guy.

[maverickgtr]

We use the ultra fine vita sand. The reptile specialty store we bought her [we finally got her calmed down enough one day to really get a good look. It took the both of us! My bf had to hold her with one hand on top of her in like a "cage" type of thing and then I gently lifted her tail] from kept them on sand and said she should be ok. She mostly eats from her bowl now anyway. But if [really when at this point I suppose...] we get another beardie, unless we adopt an older one, I'll definitely start them on reptile carpet or paper towels!

We got freeze dried crickets and I think she likes those better because she gobbles them down as soon as we put the dish down now. haha We're feeding her the freeze dried crickets and sometimes mealies at night and a salad of collard greens and bearded dragon bites [she LOVES those] in the mornings. We dust the salad with multi vitamin every other day and we dust the insects with calcium with d3 most nights. She seems to like them better than having to chase live ones, but we still get her a few live ones when we get mice for our ball pythons. But she'd still rather eat her greens and bites over all the live crickets haha I think she's just lazy.

Thanks so much for your help!