Reptile & Amphibian Forums

What is the best food to get ready for brumation. Would it be pheonix worms???

none. There isn't any specific food to use to prepare a dragon for brumation. Just feed as normal just reduce the length of daylight gradually till about 10 hours of daylight. Dragons will either start to brumate or not.

Some dragons brumate without the reduction of light at all.
-----
PHLdyPayne

Ideally you'd like to clear his digestive tract.

That's right. You want to pretty much know that once they are totally in there brumation cycle they have no heavy amounts of bugs digesting in there system. This is exactly how I have been doing it for over 5 years now....

1) get everybody's fecal's tested (once you know they are clean and fine then your onto the next step)

2) making sure all your aniamls are adults and not gravid is very important as slowing things down if they are not full grown or laying eggs is a bad idea.

3) start to lower light hours from the normal 12-14 to about 6-8 a day. It takes us about 2 to 3 weeks to slowly do this. Also if they are on lets say a 75 watt bulb or a 100 watt lower in to the next level. (75 go to a 60, 100 to a 75)

4) keep them at this light and heat for 8 weeks then slowly bring them back to 12-14 hour light days and put back in there normal heat bulbs.

5) even with the less amount of light and heat they still can and will eat and digest food. But we only feed salads and give lots of water through this whole cycle. Bugs just cause to many problems.

6) Finally once your adults start to become active and act like there normal selfs you have just successfully brumated you dragons and they should be ready to breed and lay you eggs!

-Amy
CalicoDragons.com