Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I am planning on building a cage for my beardies around christmas time, and i was wondering if i should build two seperate cages or can i keep them to gether (one is a definite male, and one is a definite female)...??? I was planning on biulding a 5 foot long, 2 foot wide, and 1 foot tall cage for both of them, but i can biuld a combo cage (2 cages stacked on top of one another) with each cagethe demensions of 4 foot long, 2 foot wide, and 1 foot tall for each dragon??? which should i do...seperate or together...which is best???

i would seperate them usually you will get agresion problems from the male and if you limit yourself to one cage murfys law says you will have problems. you can do 2 cages in a lot of different ways and make them look good , i made mine stack but you could do them side by side or make like matching end tables or something
good luck
Tony

i would do stackable cages, easiest is melamine cages. never keep a male/female together in the same cage as adults they will overbreed and end up killing the female. only house them together when wanting to breed them.

4x2x2 is the minimum for a single adult. you can get away with 18-24 inches on the height. a foot for the height is too small
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Beach Beardies

3.4.11 bearded dragons
1.0.0 Turquoise x Sunburst Veiled Chameleon
1.1.0 Sugar Gliders
0.1.0 Miss Queen Athena (Cat)

Two cages are best, especially if you don't want to breed the dragons at all. Housing a male and female together all the time, even if both get along, means lots of eggs, as many as 100 a year from a single female. (100 a breeding season is probably average, but you can have much more or less as well). Producing eggs and having a male around wanting to mate as often as he can, puts alot of stress on a female, causing them to loose weight, develop parasites, loose calcium and with proper care isn't given, eventually it will kill her at worse or drastically reduce her lifespan at best. It is much easier to build to stacking cages than have to put in the extra care and money to deal with a constantly pregnant female. (to keep her healthy, extra insects and calcium/multivitamins, etc). Not to mention the work and money needed to incubate and raise the babies, finding homes for them etc.

I also suggest the height of the cage be at least 16" with 18"-24" being the better range. Depending what you plan to use as your basking spot and UVB lights, 16" is fine. But the basking areas will need to be fairly shadow, to ensure the dragon doesn't have a chance to jump at the basking bulb or UVB bulb and possibly knocking it down, breaking the bulb or burning himself.

12" height is just too low...you need 6-8" between the dragon and the bulb to ensure the dragon can't get into contact with it. ALso you want to provide some climbing areas for your dragon and 4" is probably the most you could provide in height, in a 12" cage (allowing a couple inches for the thickness of the UVB and basking fixture, if both are inside the cage, and not sitting on top. Having stacked cages you almost do have to have the fixtures inside the cage, or the top cages will need to have 'feet' so there is enough room to get at your fixtures for the bottom cage. If this has to be done, easier to just add the extra 4"-12" of height for the cage so you can mount fixtures inside)
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PHLdyPayne