Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello All,

Let me start with a little back story- When I was younger my brother and I both had several bearded dragons and even bred a few successful clutches. They were the loves of our entire family! A while later I moved away to college and my brother decided that they were too much for him to handle alone so we gave our collection to a friend who had renovated his basement into a reptile sanctuary of sorts. Needless to say, they're thriving and have aged beautifully.

Well now, I have been toying with the idea of getting another dragon...just kind of kicking the thought around in my head because I miss our old ones. It's been on my mind for about a year now so this definitely isn't an impulse buy. I'm a frequent lurker on the "pets" section of craigslist and when I got on Tuesday night I found an ad for a hatchling beardie that this family had gotten for their son, and had later decided was too much. This was all I had been waiting for!

I called the family and asked them a few questions, and the long and short of it is that they don't want the baby dragon any more so I went and picked him up yesterday. When I was into dragons a few years ago, Dragons Den was really the only top designer retailer but this new little guy came with some papers that say he is a Cawley Red (No idea what that is) x Dachiu Citrus (no idea again). I have googled Dachiu and many of them seem very pretty, but I have no idea what a Cawley Red is. The little guy is about 5 weeks old, so quite small but he has a good amount of orange up his sides and down his back. Can anyone give me insight on a Cawley Red?

I went to PetSmart last night to pick out the stuff for his cage, and was shocked at how much I had forgotten about these little creatures. I know he needs a basking spot with temps around 100 degrees, and cannot be on sand yet because he's too small, but much past that I stood there shaking my head. So, as awkward as it feels to be posting questions about animals that I LOVED and even bred a few years ago, I need your help!

- I'm currently feeding him as many crickets as he will take...but what age can I begin to introduce worms?

- He hasn't shown any interest in greens and veggies, but that is normal for this age, right?

- Does he need full spectrum lighting, or is just a basking spot ok?

- What is the best thing to gutload crickets with? I bought some of the flukers orange gel stuff, but they don't seem to eat much of it.

Please feel free to put in any other significant info, as I am sure that a lot has changed since I had Beardies last!

I greatly appreciate the help, and will get some pics up soon.

-Michael

Not a good one, but this is him
New Baby

Hi Michael.
There are others here who will give you much more advise, but I will get the ball rolling until they show up

You will need UVB and UVA lighting throughout as much of his enclosure as you can manage. Get the longest fluorescent fixture you can find that will fit in his cage and I would recommend a Reptisun 10.0 bulb for it. He will need a basking spot in addition to this. There is great debate on these forums as to what proper temperatures should be, but the generally accepted seems to be around 110deg on the hot end to 80-ish deg on the cooler end.

He looks pretty small so if I were you I'd get hold of some Phoenix worms and Silkworms in addition to the crickets. They are very nutritious and small. You can find plenty of suppliers for both on the classifieds here. If you sprinkle silkies on his greens and let them sit a few minutes, they tend to cling to the greens. This way your lizard is likely to accidentally get a mouthful of greens as he eats the silkworms.

As far as the greens and veggies are concerned, just feed them every morning and hope he eats them one day, lol. Mine hardly touch greens - except accidentally - before they're 10" or so long, but I always offer them anyway.

I don't feed crickets anymore so I can't help you on gutloads, but I do know there are plenty of recipes online for it.

Cawley reds are well known, and Dachiu is a very reputable breeder. Just out of curiosity, did the papers that came with him say who his breeder was? If so, there's a chance you could find pictures of his parents online.

Good luck, you'll get lots of good information here!

The last post was pretty informative. I'd stick with just crickets for now. I'd gut load them with a grain food. Easiest to obtain is Flukers at the pet chains. Then use apples for moisture. The cubes are worthless in my opinion.

Hot side ambient (air) 85-90, basking spot surface 110-115

Dust all live food with calcium w/D3 and no phosphorus. RepCal is best. Once a week subsitute RepCal Vitamin.

Good starter greens are Mustard, Dandelion, Romaine(not that good nutritionally but they like it) I used to do mixed Mustard/Romaine salads to start and all my babies were good salad eaters. Now I use Mustard/Dandelion with the same results.