Two Bearded Dragons

[lars5277]

I met the guy who is building my Iggy cage, and he offered me a cage he already has. He also offered me two Bearded Dragons. I should be getting it all sometime this weekend. He is a breeder up here in North Dakota. He has tons of orange morph dragons. He is giving me the whole set up and the dragons for $425. He also volunteers at the local zoo and taught me a lot about the dragons and the Iggy. The dragons are a gift for my wife.

[Sassafrass]

Oh how cool! Beardies are such awesome critters (I should know, I have 22 of them right now). Congrats! And post pics!

[lars5277]

I will post the pics when I get them. I got a chance to hold them both tonight. They were both very gentle and calm. Several were tapping at the glass waiting to be held. He was going to sell them to make more room for his morphs, so I asked if I could take them off his hands. I hope to have everything here in the house this weekend. I will have pics up as soon as they are here. I bet he had over 100 beardys in his basement. I could have stayed there longer than the two hours I did easily.

[Sassafrass]

You are gonna have so much fun with them! They are very sweet, and LOVE attention, as you found out.

Can't wait to see pics!

[lars5277]

Ok folks, heres the new beardys. The breeder I got them from was working a deal on the two adults he was going to give me, so he gave me these three instead. He asked $60 for all three of them, wich sounded very fair to me. He said he didnt know thier sex yet, but here they are. I will let the wife name them tonight. There is also a pic of thier new viv. The Iggy will go on top and the beardys will go on the bottom. I still need to find some more wood for thier cages, I am going to hit some wooded areas this weekend. The new viv measures 5.5'H x 4'W x 2'D. I think this will work for all the lizards I have.

[Sassafrass]

Wow. Nice cage, and good looking beardies!

You NEEED to find out the sexes. If more than one is a male, you will have to seperate them. Otherwise there will be fighting. Also, even if only one is male, you will still need to seperate him from the females. You dont want them breeding before 2 years of age. Its very dangerous for the girls. They can become egg bound, which is potentially fatal, and early breeding also shortens their life span.

Here is a good link to help you determine the sexes.

http://www.dachiu.com/sexing.html

If you have any questions, feel free to PM me, or IM me on ISnuggleDragons on AIM, or Magickal1969 on yahoo.

[lars5277]

They are old enough to sex yet, how ever it appears one may be a male.

[lars5277]

I have a stupid question and can't find it mentioned anywhere on the board. Do beardies soak? I just caught Sargon (my biggest one taking a bath). I know that BPs will for mites. I go over all my animals frequently looking for odditites like mites. Every once in a while they like a drink, so we keep very shallow water dishes in thier cages. I have never seen or heard of them soaking though. Is this normal?

[recycling goddess]

a water dish isn't needed or recommended in a dragon enclosure... but they do like either a bath or misting! personally i bathe mine once a week at most since i feed silkworms and they are so high in fluids.

soaking assists with constipation (as most dragons will poop in their bath water LOL) and helps with shedding as well...

dragons do need to be single in their enclosures, just like bps... as they will dominate the other dragon(s) and often it leads to not eating and stress etc. if they are sleeping in a clump... that's dominance not cuddling. they are solitary critters in the wild coming together only for breeding.

there's some great links with info on my link page here:

http://www.timelessspirit.com/enclosurelinks.html

congrats on your new babies!!! they are soooooooooo cute.

[lars5277]

I am a bit confused by your post. You say water dishes aren't needed, but you say soaking aids in shedding and constipation problems. We have one of the dragons separated. I am getting a cage and separating the other two shortly. Stumpy was mean and dragging Draco around by his foot. We have had them for three months now and they are a little bigger than in the pics. I don't power feed for size or anything, because I don't plan on breeding them. Although, Stumpy has a pumpkin orange color and Sargon has bright yellow markings. It just seems like a lot of work and doesn't seem to be much of a market for them.

Back to the subject, is the water dish bad for them? If it aids them in certain areas it doesn't seem like it could hurt them. We keep it real shallow, just want to give them the option if they choose to take it. How do you bathe them? Hold them under the water, or put them in a shallow bowl? We don't normally bathe our herps. I used to bathe Salina before sheds, but since I made the humid hide she keeps shedding well.