Reptile & Amphibian Forums

coud you breed a dragon that is one year old

If the size is right the answer is yes, but egg production will be lower than if you wait until next season. We also have seen our early breeders produce lower production in subsequent seasons as well.
J Marchon Reptiles

what is the proper size and if i star breeding wen their one theyl get low egg production right but let say i breed them a gain whe their two will their egg production rize

what? can you please spell check!

if i breed them when they are one year old they will have low egg production. so my question is if i breed them again when they are two will their egg production rize or stay the same or lower.?

Depends a lot on the size, weight, general health and whether or not they brumated. But yes, their production would be better after 2 years of age.

A 12 month old dragon is too young to breed. It is very hard on the female to breed this young, producing small clutch sizes, higher chance of egg binding or calcium crashing, it can also stunt her growth.

It is best to wait till the female is at least 15 months old and 350g in weight. For smaller females, they can be 300g or higher, but I wouldn't breed a female lighter than 300g or smaller than 18" with tail, just to keep the overall population of bearded dragons large.

As a suggestion, I suggest you continue researching bearded dragons, buying all the new books (the bearded dragon manual, Your Bearded Dragon's Live and other books), reading all the caresheets you can find and this forum for a good year before considernig breeding your dragons. Lately I have noticed you asked alot of questions, mostly basic knowledge, things that would be found by reading care sheets and past questions in the forum. As it will take awhile to get your dragons to an age old enough to breed, might as well fill that time with research and preparing yourself for all possibilities.

Don't forget the cost of breeding and work you will have to put in for each clutch your dragon lays. Since bearded dragons can lay as many as 30 eggs per clutch (average around 20) and as often and 5 clutches a season, you do wind up with alot of eggs and babies. You need to have tanks for the babies, UVB lights and basking lights for each tank or groups of tanks (a couple rubbermaid containers with a 4' uvb fixture hanging over it, can cover several small containers). Then there is the food these bottomless pits consume. A single bearded dragon baby can eat as much as 60-100 pinhead crickets a day. Then there is dusting with calcium powder and multivitamins, cost of greens as these should be introduced as soon as possible. Possible vet bills of a clutch gets parasites of any sort. Advertising costs and looking for new homes. Possibility that some of your babies wont' find homes, so you have to house them in bigger cages as they grow etc.

Though after the initial setup costs (tanks, UVB lights etc) the non consumable items can be reused over and over, though the UVB lights, crickets (greens) and vitamins/calcium powder will have to be replenished regularly.

Your biggest expense will be crickets, UVB bulbs and greens each year (UVB bulbs should be changed ever 6-9 months)

pinhead crickets may be $12 per 1000 plus shipping (some places may include shipping for large orders) if you have 10 babies out of your first clutch of eggs hatch (going to use a low number, but for larger clutches, say of 20 or more, you will have to make the appropriate adjustments to see the true cost) and each of these 10 crickets eats 60 crickets a day, you will need at least 4200 crickets per week. Will round up to 5000 per week to cover die offs, lost or bigger eaters in the group of 10 (and mostly to make calculations simple) you are looking at $60 a week just for crickets. That same group of 10 hatchling dragons will need to be fed for up to 6 weeks before they are large enough to sell (roughly 6" head to tail, some dragons grow to this size faster than others but best rule is 6 weeks or 6" whichever comes first). So six weeks of feeding these hungry 10 dragons means spending $360.

What sucks is if the dragons you are selling are not especially high end color morphs, they may only fetch a price of $20 each. So you won't even be covering your basic food costs. If you are lucky to get really beautiful colorful dragons and sell them all, you may make more money on your first year, though most likely you won't make anything in your first year. Your subsequent years may turn a profit as your equipment costs will be lower (though not much as you won't need to buy tanks but still have to buy UVB etc.)

Also, just about every body and thir dog sells bearded dragons now, so very hard to ensure you have a good enough market in your area to sell all your babies. Again, if you don't have anything special in your dragons, it is harder to sell them, or to get good money for them. Baby normal bearded dragons in the states can be as low as $15 each. WHolesallers and petstores probably buy for even less. Thus, if you are hoping to make alot of money, then don't bread bearded dragons. If you are breeding for the joys of it and don't care if you loose money, then go ahead and breed. If you are breeding just to try it out, then I suggest you don't. Not unless you are willing to put alot of money into it, just to try it out.

All that said, I am not trying to discourage you from breeding your dragons. I just want you to think about it realistically before starting to breed your dragons.
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PHLdyPayne

i know its expensive but i have read more than 500 care sheets from a hole bunch of sites and the breeding part im down with that i can aford it and i got two new females tha are sandfire red and one male sanfire red im hoping to get a white hypo in a couple of days the only two regular beardis i have are the first ones i got but now i have more.

hi
best is a dragon that is 2 years old.
first year they grow in enght 2 year in the width.
and the second year its best they take a brumation before they lay eggs.
if you breed a female to young then all energy go to the eggs.
and not in the growth .
so youre beardie never get so big as you let him grow first 2 years .
excuse my english am dutch.
byeeeeeeeee