Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello, I'm just wondering what I can do, and if I should be concerned about my bearded dragons behavior. He hides in his hut for a couple days at a time and refuses food, and when you try to put him on his basking area he gets pissed off.
The basking area is in the low 100's. And his diet consists of calcium/vitamin D3 dusted greens, or "sandfire super foods dragons dust veggie maintenance formula" dusted greens. And calcium/vitamin D3 dusted crickets once a week. His substrate is bed-a-beast with a little bit of jungle mix mixed in. And his cage is 30"Lx18"Wx30"w and is all screen. He also has a basking branch that reaches to within 5" of the basking lamp, but he can also bask as much as
1 1/2' from the lamp if he chooses to.

Thanks for any help you can give me.

Get rid of the bed a beast stuff and the other wood product you are using as a substrate. THese are very bad for bearded dragons. They are desert to semi arid animals, not forest or jungle dwellers. Bed a beast and mulch contain way to much humidity for bearded dragons and are a serious impaction risk.

Instead use any of the following as a substrate:

Good old paper towel.
newsprint
non stick shelf liner (duck brand is good)
plastic table cloth (what you see on banquet tables at any large gathering)
reptile carpet
ceramic tiles
washed children's play sand (don't use with dragons under 10" as they can get impacted on sand)

Don't use any of the following:

wood shavings
shredded coconut husk (bed a beast etc)
Moss
Wood Mulch (cypress, jungle mix etc.)
crushed walnut
any calcium based sand.
Pellets
Carefresh
Yesterday's News
(pretty much any 'rodent' bedding)
Aquarium gravel or other forms of gravel

Now, how old is your dragon? What are you using to measure basking temps? Do you have a UVB bulb? How often are you using all that calcium powder and veggy dust? I find that veggy dust dries like cement and I don't recommend putting alot of it on greens and your dragon should get plenty of water to prevent being dehydrated.
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PHLdyPayne

My biggest concern is the screen cage. These really aren't suitable for desert dwelling species. Especially in the summer. BD's need a dry environment with ideal humidity in the 30-40% range. Lower is better than higher as sustained humidity of about 60% and above can cause respiratory infections. They are also very drafty.

I never dust salads. If you are feeding a good variety of the best choices it really is unnecessary. Here's a good link.

http://www.beautifuldragons.503xtreme.com/Nutrition.html

Everyone should really have a weight scale. Sometimes dragons eat less or hide here and there. My solution is weigh them. If they don't eat and don't lose weight then I'm not too concerned. reptilebasics.com has a good scale that is only $38.

If he doesn't eat be very watchful that you keep him hydrated.

Basking temp in the low 100's is OK, but what is the ambient temp of the cage? Too hot maybe?

Good luck,
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Indiana_Dan

I agree with much of what the other poster's said....I would worry about the all-screen enclosure, cuz it's so much harder to regulate temp that way (at least for me, cuz I live where it can go from 98F to 40 in the span of 3 hours. (*grin* there's many a time I wish I could live in a glass enclosure where someone regulated MY ambient temp!!) (oooh, maybe I do, and they're just no good at it?!)
Uhm. Tangent, sorry. Anyway....

I've found that when my beardie hides and is being temperamental like that it's usually due to the temps being wacked out in the cage.

Also I've found that she won't eat greens that've been dusted after the first hour or so. If I happen to put fresh dusted greens in right when she's hungry, she'll eat them, but not as much as she does without the dusting. (It took me several weeks and careful charting to figure that out)

Just my two cents
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0.2 cats (Pandora & Journey)
0.1 bearded dragon (Kleio)
0.0.1 green tree frog (Squishy)
0.0.3 fishes (namoli, Asana, Adagio)