Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I've had my dragons for a few months now and was turned on to breeding from a dealer, sounding like a fun project. Anyways today I put Kia the female into Rages cage for a minute, at first they just were standing there and then kia moved a little closer and Bam rage puffed his beard sized up kia and sent kia running around the cage like all hell broke loose. Finally after a few laps kia let me pick her up mouth open ready to bite but let me put her back in her cage. If they're this aggressive and scared of eachother at this age I don't think I even have a chance to breed them. Rage is about 16" and Kia is around 13" Now I'm all dissapointed thought they would get along. Should I even keep on trying to introduce them to eachother before breeding season comes around. I'm going to wait untill Kia is 18 to 24 months old before actually breed her. Will she produce eggs this first yesr? man, are they always going to continue to hate eachother is that just the way it is?

Well, she is way too young to breed anyway, and he may have wanted to but of course SHE is scared to death....she's just a little girl !! That will change in the future, and she is too small and young to be cycling eggs. Let her get the proper size and feed her well with calcium dusted foods and if she's healthy, she will be fine with laying fertile or infertile eggs. That's a long way off...one year is not too young, it's the size that counts. If you have an 18-19" female at a year old,at least 400 or more grams,you can proceed with breeding. If she comes from a smaller line of dragons, 16-17",at least 350 grams. You can tell the smaller line if the parents were both small,or if the dragon is past about 16 months and is no longer growing.

I wasn't trying to breed them today I just wanted to see if they would keep their cool being in the same cage.

I have alot too learn but am worried about getting the laying of the eggs part done right. It's down the road but want to be ready I don't want too see an impaction or other problems.

Don't let their reaction to eachother now discourage you from breeding. They are strangers to eachother and dragons really are not social animals to begin with. Its not going to be instant love at first sight.

See my response in your earlier thread below for information about breeding.

For now, till your female is at least 15 months old, I wouldn't stress them out by putting them together. When its time to breed, then you can slowly introduce them, it may take several tries of putting them together before they get the job done, but this is normal.

My female, she didn't burmate her first winter at all...but her second winter she did. And her third winter. After she woke up from her 'second' brumation (third year) she did lay infertile eggs. Her fourth winter, she didn't brumate at all...(though I didn't cycle her to brumate, she did it herself the previous two years) but she has laid more infertile clutches (though rather late compared to last year...first clutch was in July, second one this month). The females are usually pretty good at waiting till they are healthy and food is plentiful before getting into egg laying cycling. This isn't to say unhealthy, undernourished females won't lay eggs...just often they won't if conditions aren't good.
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PHLdyPayne

Forum Princess

Oh just something else I wanted to mention. I don't know if you already figured this out or not but there is some amount of cost to breeding dragons...getting them to breed and produce eggs is the easiest part. Buying and setting up the incubator (or building your own), buying rearing cages for the babies, UVB bulbs and basking lights for the rearing cages, making sure you have a good reliable supplier of crickets ahead of time, a plan on how to advertise/sell all the babies, is very important too.

An average sized female (ie 19" in length) can lay 100 eggs easily spread over 3-6 clutches. As each clutch can have anywhere between 15-30 eggs on average, you also have to make sure your incubator can handle 3-4 clutches at any given time.

Each clutch is laid about 2-4 weeks apart...average incubation time is about 60-70 days I believe (too lazy to look it up again, but pretty sure I included it in an earlier post) so by the time the first clutch hatches, your female would have lain another 2 clutches).

Once you pay for UVB tubes and fixtures to put them in, as well as basking lights, tubs, feed dishes, calcium powder, multivitamin powder, your biggest expense will be crickets.

Average hatchlings can eat anywhere between 30-60 crickets per day per hatchling. Some will eat as many as 100 crickets (though if you offer 1/4 inch, instead of the tiny pinheads, they won't eat as much, but they can pack alot of crickets if they are voracious). One way to figure out cost of crickets, is to assume the hatchlings will eat 50 crickets each a day. If your average clutch size is say, 20, that is 1000 crickets a day. So, you may need to order as many as 7000 crickets a week. One mail order website lists 2000 crickets at about $20...so about $70 per week for crickets..(some places may be cheaper, some may include shipping, if you are lucky to have a supplier close enough where you can pick up your order yourself, or provides free shipping, shipping costs won't be an issue). Expect to keep hatchlings till they are at least 6 weeks old, or till they are 6" in length...to ensure they have a good enough start to thrive when sold.

I am not posting this to discourage you from breeding but just to let you see that breeding can be costly...and this doesn't even take into consideration whether they sell right away. As your dragon's are not likely to be old enough to breed spring 2011, it does give you a year and half or so, to save up money or even to start buying the equipment you will need. Alot of tubs and 4' florescent light fixtures go on sale and that is the best time to buy them, and they all can be bought ahead of time. Same with an incubator (in fact you definitely should have at least the egg laying bin/sand and incubator purchased and set up by the time you breed your dragons. When she's laying eggs isn't the time to go buy or build an incubator.
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PHLdyPayne

Forum Princess

Thanks for the insight and info and I'm planning on being ready before the last minute so I don't screw it up and feel bad about even trying to breed I know I'm not going to have the high end clutches and make tons a money and the crickets are going to cost a ton of cash, I wannna know the out come of the crickets virus will be before I breed to so I don't run into not having food.

It is great you are preparing ahead. Though I never bred dragons myself I have bred other reptiles and it is pretty exciting going through the entire process. Raising up babies into adulthood, brumating or cooling them to put them into breeding prime, introducing males to females, watching for any signs of 'action'. Finding a nesting box filled with plump eggs, the long wait while the eggs incubate. The excitement at seeing the first slits appear on the eggs and finally the emerging baby, all slick and slimy from egg fluids coming out into the world. Its definitely an experience.

I first experienced breeding reptiles with crested geckos. They are a great intro to breeding as they are so easy to care for and their eggs don't really need any special equipment to incubate successfully. I just kept the eggs in a deli dish at room temperature (average temperature of my apartment is about 73F which is a good incubating temperature for crested gecko eggs.)
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PHLdyPayne

Forum Princess