Proud owner of a 4 year old female BD here. She's really never had any health problems and is very alert and responsive. About a year ago she went into brumation (or, what I believed at the time to be brumation). Since then she has decreased her activity level, eating only once a week, and she still hasn't "snapped out of it". As you can imagine, she has dropped quite a bit of weight over the past year.

I'm thinking that this has gone far enough and that she needs to at least eat more to put on some more weight. She's not lethargic - very alert and loves to take baths....she just won't eat as often and she hangs out in her cave all day long, as if she's taking a year-long brumation.

So far, I've tried some things such as increasing the temp in her cage and lengthening the photoperiod in her cage to get her to come out of brumation....to no avail. I'm sure you all wanna know: it's about 105 in there with a combination of UVA and UVB 10.0. Currently, her photoperiod is set for 14/10 light/dark.

1) Do beardies typically brumate beyond one year? (don't think so but I'm sure there are some exceptions).

2) Could she be holding eggs? She's never laid eggs in the past. I'm putting a nest box in her cage tonight (following the recommendations of a previous post....thank you!).

3) Has anyone experience anything similar? What were your experiences? I'd like to get some feedback on what some of you have gone through with prolongued brumation, gravid females, etc.

Cheers,

Rupert

(maybe if someone can tell me how to post a pic I'll let you all see what my set-up is like).

[ Hide Replies ]

• Weight Loss - tool_u2, Tue Jun 19 19:19:53 2007
• RE: Weight Loss - BDlvr, Wed Jun 20 06:18:34 2007
• RE: Weight Loss - tool_u2, Wed Jun 20 08:48:47 2007
• RE: Weight Loss - BDlvr, Wed Jun 20 09:10:53 2007
• RE: Weight Loss - PHLdyPayne, Sun Jun 24 23:45:08 2007