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New beardies!!

sardoniccheese Dec 02, 2006 12:27 AM

Hey I just got these two little devils from a friend. He didnt know how old they are. But from tip to toe one is 16 inches and one is 15 inches. I believe that they are both females. I have read conflicting information. Are these ready to breed? Or should I wait until they are both 17 inches. (I dont even have a male yet so dont worry Im not jumping into this too fast). I was thinking about getting a male and breeding them in the spring time, maybe late winter. Also do these guys have any special color patterns or anything? I am assuming that they are normals.

Image

Replies (4)

B22 Dec 02, 2006 05:01 AM

Hi
i would say they need to be atleast 1 1/2 year old when you r breeding them .
typ in google how to sec a bearded dragon then you get pics how to check it .
byeeeeeee
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www.dragoncave.nl

PHLdyPayne Dec 02, 2006 12:45 PM

Nice looking dragons, both look healthy and well fed.

It is hard to determine age from size alone, as all dragons grow at different rates and not all bloodlines will get as big as others. Ask the person you got the dragons from how long they had them and how big they were when he bought them, this will give an ideal how old they could be. If he bought them from a petstore or breeder as babies, they probably would have been anywhere between 4-8 weeks of age.

Breeding dragons is alot of work and you do need to decide on how you will find homes for the babies. Bearded dragons lay alot of eggs, as many as 30 per clutch, especially for the bigger females. If your pair are already fully adult, they will probably have clutches between 15-25 eggs each. Dragons can also multi-clutch, having as many as 5 clutches in one season. Average is probably around three. So that is a potential of producing 60 eggs each in one breeding season.

Not that I am trying to discourage you from breeding, breeding has it's own rewards and challenges that many people wouldn't want to miss for the world. Just want to bring to mind the work and money involved. Caging, lighting, food, etc for babies can quickly add up. 120 ravenously hungry babies will eat 1000's of crickets before they are old enough to sell to new owners. Some babies can eat 100 small crickets a day spread over 2-4 feedings (hatching should get fed at least 2 times a day, if not 3-4 times during their first month of life. Most slow down enough to eat only 2-3 times a day in their next month. After 6-8 weeks, babies will then be established enough to find new homes for). Some hatchlings may only eat 5-10 small crickets per meal, for a total of roughly 20-40 crickets a day. Even then, spread over 100 babies, that is around 400 crickets a day.

Important things to consider when deciding to breed is space to set up lots of small cages, whether they are glass tanks or rubbermaid containers. ALso, you need UVB light which is very important for babies. They grow so fast and need as much UVB as they can get for proper metabolism of calcium from their diet. Calcium powders with Vitamin D3 and multivitamins is also very necessary, at least two insect meals a day should be dusted with both and the rest with calcium. It is also important to only keep 5 babies per cage, to limit competition, toe/tail nips and bullying. It may even be necessary to isolate a few particularly tail/toe hungry individuals from their siblings. Also, you need to separate by size, as not all dragons will grow at the same rate.

So lots of cages, fixtures for heat and UVB lights, the bulbs themselves (best way is to use the 4' long florescent tube fixtures from a home hardware store and suspend or rest against a row of 2-4 cages, instead of a bunch of small fixtures and small uvb tubes). Heat lamps can be household bulbs in the hooded clamp light fixtures you can get cheap at home hardware stores.

The above will be your first highest expense, after buying incubators (or building one). Your next expense will be food. Again, you will need to buy some rubbermaid containers to house crickets and get them nicely gutloaded before feeding them to your hatchlings. A 100 baby dragons who eat say, 50 crickets a day, will need 3500 appropriately sized crickets a week. Fortunately there are tuns of feeder insect online stores to order in bulk from. Most would sell a 1000 crickets or even 5000 crickets at a very low price (maybe $10-$20 per 1000, plus shipping and tax). Having a supplier in driving distance certainly would ensure saving money on shipping.

So, when you decide to breed, best thing to do is start buying stuff you need months before you even put your male and females together. This way the initial setup costs are already dealt with and spread out over a longer period. Then save money so you won't be short at a crucial time (ie when you have 50-100 hungry babies to feed and don't have money to spare to order food for a week). ALso, research, research, research. Buy some books on bearded dragons (the bearded dragon manual, Your Bearded dragon's life, and others) and read caresheets on the internet, read the pack posts here in the bearded dragon forum, and of course, ask questions.)

In general, your females should be at least 15 months old, with 18 months being better. They should also be at least 300g of weight, with 350g or more better. The male should be a year old and a good healthy weight (around 350g is good) and not too big for your females (an inch or two of difference is ok, but if he is say, 22" and your females 17", he may seriously injure them during mating). Bring all animals to a qualified reptile vet for examination, also bring in a fresh stool sample from each dragon so the vet can test for any parasites. It is a good ideal to do this before the cooling period (ie brumation) which some dragons will go through to get them ready to breed (it is not necessary to cool dragons inorder to get them to breed successfully, but it does help. It also gives your dragons a rest between seasons, not to mention saving you a bit of money on food for a few months LOL).

As for what kind of morph/breed your dragons are, very difficult to tell. So many dragons are intermingled I think it is harder to find a purely normal dragon anymore. As very little 'fresh blood' has entered the bearded dragon trade since Australia put a ban on all exports of their natural animals about 10-20 years ago, all animals in the US and Canada are probably related to some degree.

From the color of your dragons, I suspect they may have sandfire blood in them. This naturally occuring color morph is the orange-yellow coloration. However this coloring has been used in many different morphs so hard to say how much 'sandfire' blood is in your dragons. Some pastels or hypo's also have a yellow-orange look to them. In either case they are very nice dragons.

If you want to learn more about their background, find out from your friend where he bought them. If he bought them from a certain breeder, they will be able to give you a pretty accurate history of their parents etc. If a small time breeder, they may not know, all depends on how good they have kept records. If purchased originally from a petstore, probably won't get any history, as most petstores don't know anything about the animals they get. Most buy from wholesellers who may in turn buy babies in bulk from multiple sources and probably don't make any efforts to separate dragons from particular breeders from other similar looking dragons.

When I bought my dragon in October, I had the breeder right down what the dragon was. A very 'mixed' parentage, but at least I know what genetics this dragon has LOL. My dragon's mother was a: Orange Hypo Pastel. The father was a: Snow/Super Orange German Giant Blood Sandfire.

Right there is a good sample of the mixed bloodlines many dragons are these days. Some are just one trait crossed with another but it can get confusing LOL.

This reply turned out rather long, but I do hope you are able to gleam some benefit from it.
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PHLdyPayne

B22 Dec 02, 2006 01:59 PM

Hi
i know they told it you many times so my again .
i think you helping people inhere very good.
even me learn allot .
long answhere.s and good info .
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thx PHLdyPayne
byeeeeee
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www.dragoncave.nl

sardoniccheese Dec 03, 2006 01:41 AM

Wow, that was a lot of useful information. Thank you. I had a lot of that stuff thought through already as I have quiet a few tanks around the house. I breed leopard geckos also. I didn't realize that they laid so many eggs. Maybe I will attempt to only breed one of them. They are at 250-260 grams right now so I will wait a few months before even considering breeding them. Thank you once again for all of the useful information.
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5.10 Leopard Geckos
0.1 Pictus Gecko
0.1 Mali Uromastix

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