Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Syd and Rascals babies started hatching May 21st. Airborne FINALLY brought my crickets tonight and I thought I would try and see if the babies would eat some. The ones that hatched yesterday and quite a few that hatched today all ate some! They seem to have a hearty appetite. The first few days they dont eat many. But sinze they are eating on the day they hatch I think I better order more crickets! haha

Breeders.....
1. How many crickets do you usually order for a clutch of babies? My first clutch has 19 (hatching now), the second has 13 (they arent due to hatch for a couple weeks). I always order too many, or not enough! ahhhhhhhhh!

2. What is the best way to minimize tail and toe nips? I know only housing a couple to a few per cage and feeding them 2-3 times a day is a couple ways. Do you have any other ideas? I find feeding them very stressful because I am always worried about them biting each other. I had a couple nips last year and I thought I took every precaution possible! I would try to feed each seperately in a container, but I find with this method some dont eat at all and others are stressed and only eat a couple. The best way I found to get them to eat good is to just drop crickets in their everyday enclosure. But this seems to maximize the chances of nipping occuring. Whats everyone else think?

Out of 19, I now have 13 or so hatched. Others pipping. They are cute little fellas. So energetic!!!!!!!! These guys are active right out of the egg. They definitely take after their father. Rascal (father) is a comical, energetic and alert dragon.

I havent taken any pictures really yet. Just 3 or so and all were of them coming out of the egg. I will take pictures throughout the next couple weeks and then post some. They arent the most colorful dragons but I am not in it for the buck. I prefer healthy and big babies with good personality.

They are lighter then usual with shades of peach and some have neat looking patterns. The friend and breeder I sold them too last year said Syds babies turned very light as they grew and shed, like a pastel. They did have a different father last year, but the ones this year do look similiar to the ones last year. Although the ones last year did have more peach and red. In my eyes they are beautiful.

Take care, Lindsay

1. How many crickets do you usually order for a clutch of babies? My first clutch has 19 (hatching now), the second has 13 (they arent due to hatch for a couple weeks). I always order too many, or not enough! ahhhhhhhhh!
***I had 17 babies, fed them 3x a day and I averaged about 800- 1,000 crix a day. Mine ate greens right away too, and they still ate like there was no tomorrow.

2. What is the best way to minimize tail and toe nips? I know only housing a couple to a few per cage and feeding them 2-3 times a day is a couple ways. Do you have any other ideas? I find feeding them very stressful because I am always worried about them biting each other. I had a couple nips last year and I thought I took every precaution possible! I would try to feed each seperately in a container, but I find with this method some dont eat at all and others are stressed and only eat a couple. The best way I found to get them to eat good is to just drop crickets in their everyday enclosure. But this seems to maximize the chances of nipping occuring. Whats everyone else think?
***Also seperate them by size and how aggressively they eat.
TheClassyLizard

Who did you order your crickets through? I will be ordering more monday and was curious. It seems like you dont get anywhere near the amount you order. I wonder if its because how small they are.

I have been offering the babies finely chopped greens since the first day, but I havent seen them eat them yet. I am sure they will in time.

I was wondering. Dont you guys think moving them around alot stresses them out? Or doesnt bother them much? If your seperating them by aggressive eaters and size your moving them around quite a bit. Just wondering. Just so its clear, I do seperate them by size

Basically if fed a diet of completely crickets, a medium sized clutch goes through approximately 10.00 dollars a day worth of food. Thats like 300 a month!! Boy these babies can eat.

I usually sell them wholesale to a foster home at around 2 weeks of age, where they are raised up several more weeks then sold. Im not sure what I am going to do this year. I might have to put up a ad on fauna or something.

Does anyone here feed their babies anything else besides crickets as a staple? Besides greens. Just curious. I ordered 1000 lobsters for my adults and was wondering if newly hatched roaches could be fed to them? I wouldnt feed them this year because I dont have a large roach colony yet. But next year IF (BIG IF) I breed I was thinking about it. Well I will stop with all the questions. You would think I was new to this or something!!HAHA Lindsay

I think at the time I was using both Groomscricketfarm and reptilefood for crix.
After the first week, I handled the babies when I felt like it..lol I gave them baths and picked them up whenever. There was absolutely no stress caused by it to any of them. They all just kept on eating and growing!!!
At 2 weeks mine were 5 1/2", when hatched between 4"-4 1/2".
It's hard not to handle them anyway, when you have to move them around to clean up poop constantly.
As far as other staples, I know some people use fruit flys..and trying pellets can't hurt either.
TheClassyLizard

I handle mine all the time too I didnt mean handling them stressing them out. What I meant was constantly changing their cage and cagemates stressing them out? By a week or two of age mine are really used to be handled!! *smiles*

Are fruit flies about the same price as crickets? I put rep cal pellets in with the greens. They usually dont bother with them though!lol Little brats.

Thanks, LM

I've never used fruit flies, but went to ReptileFood to check em out. This is what it says:
The flies are shipped in vials that contain between 50 and 100 flies. The vials contain a blue medium that serves as the flies’ food and water source. The best thing about these flies is that they will continue to reproduce in the vial. If conditions are right, each vial will produce over 500 flies in six weeks.

**It says they have produced "wingless flies".
They are $3.75 for 4 vials, but the largest are only 1/8".

Hi
I have found that if you take the logs and stuff out of the babies cages it will cut way down on the nips. The reason is that it seems that the other dragons will nip at tails and stuff when they see them hanging off of the edges of the logs and such. Lorna that used to come on here alot told me about this and since then it has seemed to work pretty good
http://www.dragon-planet.com

Hmm..that makes sence. Though I didn't know I was doing a good thing especially.
I used flat rocks for basking spots and everyone left here with all their , parts.
TheClassyLizard

I dont use logs or branches. I just use rocks. I think the highest rock is maybe 1 1/2 inches high. Should I take them out? The couple nips that happened last year happened during feeding time. I sit and watch while they eat, but all it takes is a second for one cricket to crawl on one baby and another goes to eat it and accidently grabs the other baby too. I think one nip may have happened when I wasnt in the room and it wasnt during feeding time. So it may have happened like bojack said. (The baby saw it hanging a little and nipped it??) I feel so horrible when it happens. It must hurt them so bad

I should be hearing something soon from a friend. If they dont want to take the babies where is a good place to try and sell the whole clutch? Has anyone had success using [bleep]? I have tried putting a couple wanted ads there, I NEVER get a response. I would hate to buy a KS account, just for these 2 small clutches. I hope I dont have to sell them to someone I dont know! It makes me nervous. I am soooo picky. They are my babies and I love them so much I put alot of time, care and money into them. I want to make sure they go to a good home to be raised for a few more weeks before being sold to permanent owners.

Well I guess I will quit venting Thanks, Lindsay

Ok call me strange. I usually go through about 2000 crickets a week. I go with crickets that are 1/4" to 3/8". I feel the trick to getting them to eat veggies is to not chop them, but to food proccess them. I never have a problem with tail or toe nipping. I just sold 13 of the 18 babbies of my first clutch of the year. None of the 18 had tail or toe nips at 4 weeks, and they were all housed in a spare 55 gallon tank. In these 4 weeks I think I went through an order 2000 crickets from reptile food, an order of 2000 crickets from wormman, and about 500 of a 1000 box that I bought at regal reptiles (from mulberry) because my wormman order didn't come in. I think some people have issues with feeding huge numbers because som many of this little buggers die. I have had very good success with keeping little crickets this year. My formula is keep 2000 in a 24"X16" plastic container with a screen lid. I cover the floor with flukers cricket feed. In a small bottle lid (like the ones that beardie pellets come in) I place cricket water (nature zone). And every other day I throw in the stems of collards/dandelions chopped up in. I also keep 2-3 egg crates in there and like 5 paper towel rolls. Just what works for me. As for nipping I feed my dragons veggies in the morning, I food process them and then spread them out on the cage floor no dish. I also feed them crickets in the morning and night. I do not follow the rule whatever they eat in 5 minutes, the crickets will eat the veggies over the dragons. I throw a bunch in and they disappear as the dragons eat them through the day. I then feed them at night (usually about 6PM, lights out at 9PM) and give them enough crickets so that the dragons have crickets until lights out.
-----
Derek Affonce
DeKeAff Exotics
dekeaffexotics.com

I also ordered 1/4 inch crickets. The babies are eating only about 3-6 of them and are full. But the babies are only 1-2 days old.

About the food processor. I bought one for greens at I believe wal marts a while back. I tried to use it to chop the adult greens once and it just didnt work. Made a royal mess!!! What kind do you use? What setting do you have it on etc. I have been putting greens on the cage floor, but I havent seen them eat them.

I have 4 baby dragons per 10 gallon enclosure at the moment. I still worry about tail and toe nips. I dont think I would ever trust leaving crickets in the cage mainly because the couple nips I had last year happened during feeding time when a dragon was going for a cricket and accidently got a tail too.

Well I got to get going.... take care, Lindsay

I use the little food procesors. They don't make good veggies for adults, too fine. Big food proccesors make a pastey mush. The little ones though just finely chop the veggies. I also like adding ESU calcium spray. Makes the veggies have a sweet fruity smell. Extra calcium never hurts though. The tail nip thing is always a concern. I find with crickets in the cage they aren't as verocious at feeding time as they have been picking all day. Just my idea, to each their own. There is no one correct way as is the case with most things beardie.
-----
Derek Affonce
DeKeAff Exotics
dekeaffexotics.com