Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My female bearded dragon (Heidi) is clearly gravid. She has a lumpy belly and has been digging in the substrate, so i made a nesting box for her. I put about 15" of topsoil, sand and vermiculite in a plastic tub and put her in.

She frantically dug into the corners, but the soil kept collapsing so i got it wet enough to hold. She didn't seem to mind my being there.

I started a hole for her but she wasn't interested. I looked for pictures of what a good hole looks like - is it angled, is it straight down, how big is it - but could only guess from a single photo i found of a natural clutch. I made some depressions and left her alone. She didn't dig at all so i finally put her back in her tank. I suspect she may have been digging only because she hadn't realized she could jump onto the lip of the tub yet.

The next day when i got home from work i put her in the nesting box, but again she didn't dig. I left her in there for half an hour and when i came back there was a single egg next to her. She looked confused.

She kept hopping up onto the lip of the container so i finally put her back in her tank. Another half hour and there is an egg sitting next to her on the substrate (shredded aspen).

I checked the nesting box and tank carefully. No other eggs. She is still full of them, you can see the lumps and feel the eggs. So i gave her a nice long soak in the sink with warm water. She didn't dig or lay any more so i put her back in her tank and she ate some crickets.

Today i gave her another soak, and she looked like she was about to poop in the water, but nothing happened. I threw a cricket in the water and she ate it. Eventually she started trying to climb out so i put her back in the nesting box.

The two eggs are both pale yellowish, and moist. You can clearly see pink inside one of them. They are not evenly colored. They are not dimpled either. I dutifully scooped them up and placed them in moist vermiculite in a deli container. There is a pet store that will incubate them for me nearby. My GF did catch the dragons "in the act" a few weeks ago, so they could be fertile. She is no reptile expert, but she says she clearly saw his thingie, which is something i have never witnessed. But there has been a lot of headbobbing and thrashing going on.

All of the accounts i have read seem to lay all of their eggs at once. She hasn't been digging, she seemed to be straining today, and she only laid two eggs. Is something wrong?

Do i need to replace the topsoil/sand/vermiculite with pure vermiculite? Should there be a heat lamp shining on the soil surface? Do i need to take her to the vet? Or should i just relax and let nature take its course? I lost an iguana to egg-binding years ago so i'm a little worrried.

First off the shredded aspen is a bad substrate for Bearded Dragons. But that's another discussion.

Some dragons can be very particular about their nest site others are not. The vermiculite, soil, sand mixture is fine as long as she can dig a tunnel in it without it collapsing and that it is not so wet that it is hard to dig in. This year I switched to 100% sand in my nest boxes and have been happy with that.

She needs to lay the eggs now. She is trying to hold them in until a suitable nest site is found but is having difficulty holding them as the couple strays show. It may help to think like a dragon. The eggs need to be kept moist not wet, and incubated at about 85 degrees. That is what she is looking for in her nest site.

So heat the mix until it is about 85 and use a heat lanp to keep the dirt warm and the ambient in her normal range (85-92). I'd pile the mix into a corner so the slope is about 45 degrees. I'd start a hole about half way into the slope and angle down slightly. When you hit the bottom of the container you can just go along the bottom. Mine are big enough to fit my hand and arm in easily but of course it depends on the dragon size. I'd say I go about 9" in. Just don't make it too tall. Dragons feel secure in lower places. Then when you put her in, put her head into the hole so she gets the idea. The light should make a little light in the hole.

You should put her in as soon as she warms up in the am. I've read that most dragons lay their eggs from 3-6pm and it proves out in my experience. Occaisionally, I've had them lay them as late as 8pm. Try not to watch or disturb her if she starts digging as she may abandon the nest as unsafe. She will take a few hours to customize the nest to her specifications and then it could take up to 2 hours to lay all the eggs.

The eggs you mentioned don't sound fertile. Maybe you could post a picture. They will need to be incubated right after laying and cannot be turned or rotated. Fertile eggs are completely white and full, not dimpled. Some yellow in the eggs usually is an indication of a calcium deficiency in the female.

OK, so i took and posted a pic of Heidi in the nesting box. This is a great learning experience - but i just hope the dragon makes it. My GF and i are starting to get really attached to her, all this interaction has made her personality more evident.

Last night after getting BDlvr's suggestion (thanks BDlvr, i have searched a few more of your posts and they are helpful) i left work early and got a red basking lamp, more vermiculite, extension cords, more crickets, new thermometer, &c &c.

I rearranged the nesting box with a 45 degree slope, and started a hole, horizontal with a slight downward slope, about 9" deep with a small trowel. (The hole looks small in the pic for some reason but she can fit in it even if she is puffed up) After a good warm water soak i put her in the box and stuck her head in the hole. She didn't like that (i swear she gave me a dirty look) but didn't struggle or puff up and stayed there for about an hour.

I took the climbing log from the tank and put it by the nesting box in case she climbs out but she hasn't even jumped to the lip again. She spent the night in the box, up the slope & under the towel. She seems to like it there so i am thinking about covering more of the box. I have the lamp trained on the lower slope by the hole entrance, i mist the soil periodically so it will stay moist. When i soak her she drinks from the water she is in so i think she is pretty hydrated. Her tail is not as fat at the base as it was a couple of weeks ago. I just got her a month ago, i will increase her calcium supplement. I gutload her crickets on collard/kale/cabbage/carrot salad mix with rep-cal and rep-vite powder, but probably should be giving her dusted crickets more often.

This morning she moved to the now warm lower part of the box, but hasn;t laid any eggs. I gave her a dusted cricket which she chased & ate, but she didn't eat a second one. She never seemed to like the flavor of the supplement. She hasn't done any more digging. She is awake and alert, watches me when i come into the room (the nesting box is in the bathroom so i can shut the door when i am asleep or gone...but she hasn;t tried to escape the box today) and eats a little. I am more worried about the fact she doesn;t dig any more. The bathroom has a ceiling fan / heat lamp combo, i have had that on with the door closed for three days now, it is between 80 and 90 degrees F in the room. We try to stay out of there so she feels safe & private but how much difference does it make? She doesn't show signs of agitation any more as long as we move slowly. My GF put the lid on the box yesterday while she showered and when we took the lid off Heidi hadn't moved.

Shall i enlarge the hole some more, soak her more, keep putting her in the hole or just leave her alone? Should i change the light cycle in the bathroom ( i have been leaving the heat lamp on at night but now i have a red one.) Today is day four, i have been leaving her alone in there for hours at a time and am now even leaving her while i go to work or sleep. Still no more eggs. Suggestions?

The nest box looks good.

I never leave mine in the nest box overnight. The warmth and humidity raises the risk of causing a respiratory infection.

Pitch that red lamp I tested them and the light is in the visual range of a BD despite what the mfg. may claim. Don't change her cycle of day/night or temps. I always move mine to their regular home just before the lights normally go out unless she has been digging and is in the hole.

At night when she's not there, you need to put the light real close to get the dirt as warm as possible. I now have under tank heaters and dedicated nest boxes for this. Then in the morning I remix the dirt, moisten it, pack it down slightly, and dig another starter hole. You need to provide regular light so the hole is not pitch black inside. In nature a dark hole could contain a snake or other lizard eater. Aim the light at the entrance but not down the hole if you know what I mean. Check that it is 85-90 and put her back in.

I think you'll be OK. Dragons are stupid about laying eggs the first season. After the first clutch they seem to get the idea and are more comfortable ablout laying them. Plus they teach their owner how to properly make a nest to their specs. so they don't have to work so hard.

Check out this web site for better choices of greens/vegs.:

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

Lots of other great info there too.

If you want you can backchannel me your phone number and I will call you.

Steve

Ok, i am getting the hang of the forums. Here is a pic of the two "stray" eggs she laid 2 days ago. I put them in a 2:1 water/vermiculite mix, in a deli container, with holes punched in the lid (removed for pic). The thermometer reads 82 F and it has been pretty stable. I ordered a Hovabator but it hasn't arrived yet and may not be necessary.

The first egg (background) is whiter and less translucent than when it was first laid. The second one (foreground) is still a little yellowish and you can see shades of pink inside. Neither is dimpled but the second egg has droplets of moisture on it - sweating? Condensation?

I got Heidi about a month ago. I had a pair of males (Heckle and Jeckle - you can't sex them when they are babies) but they had begun fighting so i traded the submissive for a female. The dominant (Heckle) took a real shine to Heidi (i'm sure it was her name, a clever pun on Jekyll and Hyde) and my GF says she saw them mating. Well she is already quite gravid so we are not sure if Heckle is the father or not. My GF wants to try and incubate the eggs but i don't want her to get her hopes up too high.

I realize i am repeating part of my earlier post but i have found that the more thorough i am the better advice people can give me. I got more fresh vermiculite in case she does actually lay the rest of her clutch.

I wouldn't have high hopes for either of those 2 but you'll have to wait and see. They will collapse within 10 days if they are not fertile.

Females form eggs with the hopes of having a male fertilize them. If the timing was off this clutch may have been shelled before she mated with the male. In general they need to mate within 2 weeks from her rise from brumation if she took one. Either way if this clutch proves infertile the next will most likely be fertile.

I do not sell dragons and only hatch a few eggs for me. I choose to incubate the eggs from my females 2nd clutch rather than the first.

Just be sure you have a plan with what you will do with the dragons before you choose to incubate them. It is humane to freeze them when laid. It is difficult to find homes for a lot of babies. You also may get attached to them and will never find homes that meet your specs. This year I have 9 babies and they consume between 4 and 5,000 crickets a week. Keep this in mind when you are deciding how many to incubate. My big female laid over 130 eggs this past season. If I incubated them all that would be, hmmm let's see, 65,000 crickets a week to feed them. lol. Oh and that doesn't count my other females. Darn.

So you feed your babies 65-80 crickets each EVERY DAY? Thats a lot man, I hope they get greens too, lol. I want to see the BD that can eat that many cricket in one day. I'd imagine they could die..

I buy them, they eat them. I don't count them. But I have had dragons eat 100 at a sitting in past years when I did count them. I'd be real concerned about a dragon that didn't eat at least 25 in a meal. Unless the crickets aren't the appropriate size.

Maybe that's why I have dragons born 8/8/07 that are 17 1/4" long and 255 grams today.

Day Five.

Returned Heidi to her tank last night. Got up this morning to find two more eggs next to her. I put on the gloves and picked them up - they were kind of stuck together so i put them in the vermiculite without trying to separate them. They each have some yellowish coloration, and a translucent spot near the top surface.... you can see blood vessels clearly in one (see attached pic) and i am assuming that means they are fertile, but i have no idea how long they were lying in the substrate next to her.

I went and poured hot water into the next box and stirred and packed the soil, then again started a hole for her. I put some dusted crickets in the tank and she ate five or six before i stopped watching, but she never stirred from the spot she was in. I gave her some time then picked her up and brought her to the nest box, This time i gently stuck her headfirst into the hole and left her sitting there. A half hour later she hadn't moved. Another half hour and she has moved to one side of the entrance and is basking in the heat lamp. No evidence of eggs in the hole, which she doesn;t seem to have enlarged or backfilled either. I gave her about twenty cc's of water from a needleless syringe, this was the first time she actually opened her mouth and started drinking from it.

I will leave her in the box all day and check on her every hour or so (it's hard to check less often even though i don't want to disturb her) she doesn't seem agitated so i think that she has acclimatized to my presence... that and moving very slowly and holding still a lot seem to help.

Anyway, she is eating and drinking, but not digging. She laid two eggs last night and two two nights ago. Is it going to continue like this or will she eventually lay the rest of the clutch at once? How will i know when she is done? i still wonder what i can do to make the nest site more attractive. I am thinking about getting a heating pad instead of the basking light. Putting the lid on the box for about an hour with the heat lamp shining on it makes it pretty hot & humid in there.... but i don;t want to put the lid on with her in it!

You have a weird dragon. What is her weight? and length?

Generally dragons stop eating when they are ready to lay eggs. Yours is still interested in food which is odd.

The eggs should be pure white and opaque. I think she didn't have the calcium reserve to properly shell them. They may be fetile but without a proper shell they will fail.

You want the dirt warm when you start. I try to get it to 90 and then it cools during the day which is OK. Then just use a basking light to give her a normal temp. basking spot in the nest box. You are not trying to get her environment humid. Humidity is bad for desert reptiles. It will be humid in the hole but should not be in the nest box.

Other than that all I can say is cross your fingers and try it again tomorrow. You will know when she is done because she will look muck thinner and she will spend an hour or 2 making it look like there was never a hole there. Let her finish before you remove her. Give her water.

If she becomes inactive it is time to bring her to the vet right away.

I'm surprised no one else has any other suggestions. I'm running out of ideas.

You could try making a nesting container inside her cage that she is normally in. One of my females hates the laying bin, but for some reason loves it when I fill a tuperware shoe box with moist sand and leave it in her enclosure. She will lay in it every time, but wont do anything in the lay box.

Just another suggestion!

Got back from dinner and she is still in the box, in the hole of her own accord for the first time... face in, with just her tail & rear legs showing.... and a fifth egg next to her. This one looks whiter than the previous ones but it has dirt on it, on all sides, so no knowing which way was up. They say not to turn them from their original orientation... what is the reasoning behind this?

forty minutes later, check on her and she has emerged from the box and is partly atop the egg so i figure it best not to disturb her. Later we will return her to the tank. Tomorrow i will put a pile of moist vermiculite in one corner of the tank, we'll see what happens.

Don't know her weight, but she is about 6" snout-to-vent and i don't think she is skinny. The base of her tail and her thighs are not as robust as they were last month when we got her, but i figure that is natural for egg-making (gravidity??) I'll try to get another pic later & find a way to weigh her.

Priority one is her survival. She is not terribly active - just moves around a little bit, generally seeking warmth/darkness, chasing a cricket or doing a little swimming when soaking. But she does stay in one position for hours... which she did not do up to a few days ago. We will try to care for the eggs as best we can until it is obvious they are not going to make it.

If anybody recognizes this behavior please speak up, especially if it is life-threatening. It sounds like most dragons eventually lay their eggs, one way or another, but not a couple at a time like this.

Still no digging or backfilling either.

Egg binding is always a possibility and is life threatening. I don't feel it is a concern so much in your case because she is laying a few eggs. I'd try the other posters suggestion.

I've never had a female with behavior like yours. I have a suggestion of another information source that I will email you privately.

Day Six.

Another egg, that makes six total, she laid sometime between 10 AM and noon. She laid it in her tank, it is where she was sleeping. It has a little poop with it, i tried to get it clean but didn't want to handle it too much. It too is unevenly colored, it has two patches where it is yellowish to translucent, the rest is white. I guess the whole egg should be that white. I put it in the container with the others, on vermiculite.

Weighed her (203 g, that's almost 30 oz) and gave her a soak. She is more like seven inches, snout to vent. This is after laying six eggs. She is still lumpy. At one point during the soak she got startled and tried to swim for a while - very energetic. When i put my hand in the water and brought it up under her she calmed immediately, I think she is getting used to being handled.

After a couple of unproductive hours in the nesting box i filled a dish tub with wet warm vermiculite and put it in her tank. I practiced digging in it, with different moisture contents before putting it in and it doesn't really hold a tunnel well. I'm thinking of trying the buried hide bark trick. So far she hasn't dug in it, just lying there (not laying there, which is what we want her to do, arrh arrh)

Wow 203 that's not good. The smallest gravid dragon I had developed eggs at 245 and I stressed. I got her to 340 before she laid them. 6 eggs so far that's about 18 grams. Laying in the 220's that's small.

I changed my nest boxes to all sand and am happy with it. The dragons don't get dirty and it is easy to dig in and holds a tunnel well.

BDLvr has much more experienced with bearded dragons laying eggs than I do so I haven't commented thus far.

I have read about dragons dropping a few eggs here and there which almost always turn out to be infertile..it is almost like the body is getting rid of the infertile ones first, before the rest of the eggs are ready to come out.

For the egg laying bin, many just use plain washed children's play sand that is damp enough to hold tunnels but not leak water. Too wet and the dragons won't use it, too dry and they can't use it (tunnels collapse) a soil/sand mix has worked for others too...

As she is dropping eggs, even if its one or two at at time, I won't worry too much about egg binding yet. IF she stops laying any eggs and still obviously has eggs, then egg binding can be a real concern. Or if any of the eggs come out broken, a vet trip will be needed asap. So far she is getting those eggs out...even if most don't look fertile.

For rotating, the eggs are ok to turn in the first 24 hours of being laid, or about that length of time, so if she is rolling an egg around you can take it out and put it into the incubator in any way and it shouldn't have any problems setting and hatching (if fertile of course). It is only after they have been laid for 24 hours or so and sitting still, that the embryo 'sets' and if the egg turned, it can drown it. Marking to top of the egg with a felt tip pen (non toxic) or marker makes it easier to know which side is up, should an accidental 'spill' happen. If the egg is turned accidentally then turned back fairly quickly, it will save the egg.
-----
PHLdyPayne