Reptile & Amphibian Forums

She has laid a normal clutch this year, then followed by a small second clutch.

She was fed well throughout both.

She eats very good, has sufficient light, heat, and vitamins.

Her spine seems to show. I can see the ridge of her spine from just about the base of her skull all the way to the middle of her tail.

Any ideas? I don't have a scale or any comparison for weight loss reference, unfortunately.

Is this a sign of undernourishment from her egg producing, or something worse?

It can take a lot out of a reptile after producing and laying eggs. Definitely feed her some pinkies or fuzzies so she gain back the weight. She needs high calorie food right now.

Great, that is what I had thought. Good thing is, she LOVES pinkys so she should bulk up pretty quick.

thanks.

I don't believe in feeding pinkie to dragons. I would offer her constant daytime acccess to live food and salad. Live food should be a variety of crickets, superworms, hornworms, silkworms, and roaches.

I think beardies are opportunistic feeder willing to feed on anything even smaller verterbrate like smaller lizard and such in the wild. I don't think there is any harm in feeding pinkies as long as you don't make it fat, and in this case the dragon needs it to get all the nutrient and weight back. Pinkies are more nutritious than inverterbrate preys...the prefect food for female who just produced and laid eggs.

I accept that as your opinion. Mine just differs. Here, some of the females lay 2 weeks apart and I have never used pinkies to keep the weight on them.