Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi gang. Wanted to get some of your opinions. I am turning a room in my house into a bearded room so that they can have more room to run around and so i can bread more. But What I am wanting is to see everyone elses rooms. If you all can post some pic. That would be cool. Talk to you all later. Keep in touch.

Stittingham

I don't have much of a facility just melamine stackable cages and a baby rack. Pretty much they share their space with me LOL. Bennett has an awesome facility for all his reptiles as well as the Dachiu's. Check the pics out on their sites.

beardiedragon.com
dachiu.com
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Webshots photos
www.Mystical-Dragons.com

Are you talking about converting a room into a giant bearded dragon enclosure, or just using a room to put more/bigger enclosures in? Here's what I would do for either of them:

Room as a giant enclosure: This seems like it would be a cool experiment, but I don't think I'd ever really try it. Just the same, if I did, I would do it like this. I'd probably have a window in the door to the room so I can see what they're all up to without opening the door, but whether or not I did, I would also have a plexiglass and wood structure that would be about 3' feet tall and basically just be a horseshoe shape (except more square) around the inside of the door, giving it enough room to open into the room without possibly harming the beardies. Furnishing would be hard, because sand would obviously not be the substrate of choice....maybe a lot of shelf liner or something? You could go with covering the whole room with soft indoor/outdoor carpetting, but that would be much harder to clean than having sections of it or something else. I'd turn one corner into the high basking spot....with some sort of structure for them to climb on and heat lamps hanging from the ceiling or from something protruding from the wall (they would probably be mercury vapor bulbs, because it would be much harder to get big flourescents down that low...though there would also be some normal flourescents in the ceiling so the room would be bright. I'd have the adjacent corner be another basking spot, either the same temperature or slightly lower (depending on how many dragons I would have). This is a little wasteful, but as long as it's not the room where the thermostat is, I would leave all of the heating and air conditioning on in that room just to keep the temps right year round. Either that or I would have some sort of thermostat system in the room. Besides that....some nice hides and branches....and some plants to make it look cool. Maybe a big water bowl for them to swim in, but I'm not sure. By the way, for this setup I would still only house one male to many other females, and only around breeding season (if I were to breed).

What you probably were talking about was just having a room with many different enclosures? If you were, what I would do is find (or build) some really nice enclosures....since you have the room, go with 4'x2'x2' for single beardies (like males, outside of breeding season)...and something like 6'x3'x whatever height you want (probably 2'). Make sure these are the cages with built in lighting that you can stack up...so front opening is a must. Once you get all of the cages, determine how much of the room they will take up and determine if you will expand your collection in the near future. If no, and you end up with a lot of open room, maybe do some decorating? Potted plants (that are non toxic), wall decorations...maybe paint the walls.

Just some ideas I had if I were personally going to do either.

Hey thanks for the input. Tell you the truth thats exactly what i am doing. Making a lage enclosed room. Its like 7X7 and I am making shelfs and clubing branches in the room. I am making a floor in the room so that in the winter the ground is not cold because its in the basment. I will get you pics as soon as it gets build I am going to have 4 females and 1 male. I am going to see if thats to much breeding for him and if it is then i will get another male but we will see. THere is going to be a few basking spots plus a good size water bowl. I am planing on putting a glass storm door on the room so that we can still interact with eachother even when I am on the pc. But for right now its just a half door and I can open the top to check on them. I think I have just about got the heat lights worked out. Been working on getting the heat spots and the general room temp. just right. Well thanks for the input. Will get pics as soon at the room is done. Planning on putting a web cam In there and will get that posted when the room is done. Thanks again.

Stittingham

The Dachiu's don't just have all the stuff in one room. I think the first time I was there, about 2 years ago, most of it was just downstairs in the basement. There were babies in the rubber maid bins, another row of cages where they were brumating some dragons. I think the egg laying bins were upstairs. I know the incubator was upstairs. When I returned a few months later, the dragons had begun taking over the upstairs. I think those were mostly holdbacks, as they did not appear to be of breeding size.
I just looked at the pictures and it seems like there has been some additions since I was last there, and some changes in the organization.

From what i'm getting, it sounds like the OP just wants to give the beardies a room and let them run free in it. I could be interpretting this wrong, but it didn't sound like cages were involved.
I hope I am interpretting this wrong, because that idea just wouldn't work safely.
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3.0.0 Bearded Dragons Woodrow, Dexter, Tehko (My first beardie Griffin who turned me crazy, and Erik my Rankins, who will remain a midget- deceased)
1.0.0 Cat- the regular variety (Dominic- fat cat)
0.1.0 Dog- Lab mix(Betty- escape artist extraordinaire)
1.0.0 Red Eared Slider (Franklin)

Of course it would work safely. As long as you take everything out of the room and furnish it like a giant cage, what will go wrong that couldn't go wrong with a regular cage? Of course, one thing I forgot to mention is that you would want to put wire cages around heat bulbs (just in case) and around outlets, heating ducts (depending on how intense the hot/cold air blows out of them....I know if my dragon sits in front of my air conditioning vents for even less than a minute he starts to get sleepy and will even fall asleep if I don't pick him up and move him... I assume this has something to do with you cold the air is when it first leaves the ducts. I'm not sure though. Most basements (in my experience) have ceiling ducts and this would not be a problem there.

I still don't get it though...how would this be unsafe if proper heating/lighting and furnishings were used?

Also, on a side note, even with such a large enclosure, I wouldn't leave a male beardie in all of the time, only during breeding season. Two male beardies will probably still cause problems even in a room-sized enclosure. I would HIGHLY recomend that this is taken into consideration. Why not just use a simple enclosure for the male most of the year? I personally don't see a problem with just using normal enclosures all of the time, but this does seem like a very cool idea.

Only one person I have come across that created a room to be used as one huge bearded dragon cage. He converted a room especially for his dragons, with lights, heating etc. I listed his website below. There are a few pictures and description of how he set it up. I wouldn't mind doing this at some future date myself, but only thing I am not sure on is how to clean it completely.

My thoughts on that would be to construct a drain in the room's floor, use cement to shape the floor so it slopes to the center so water can wash out. The drain would have to be good enough to allow fine sand and small debris to pass, or you will be unglugging the drain too often. TO set that up though you would need to have a plumber come in and set up the drain, etc. I probably be more inclined to do this sort of set up for larger lizards like monitors or green iguanas.

Borderview Dragons

I suppose if done properly, such a setup could work, but only for a group of females for the full year. During most of the year, your males would have to be somewhere else, seperated from the females. Then you could bring in one at a time for a few weeks. The issue with that is, depending on how long you were going before putting a different male in, you may not know who the father is. Actually, in such a setup, you might not be able to determine who the mother is if the circumstances where right. You could of course obtain a group of females all from the same bloodlines, and one or more males of a different bloodline than the females, but all males the same. Then you would know the bloodline of all babies because it would be the same.
With such a setup I would feel extremely apprehensive about selling 1.1 (or more females) to anyone. While it isn't your direct responsibility if a buyer chooses to breed related dragons, it can't be a good thing if your stock is being inbred.
As great an idea as it does seem, I think it just presents an oppurtunity for too many problems.
It's a great idea for one or two larger lizards like monitors or iguanas, but it just doesn't seem good for smaller ones.
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3.0.0 Bearded Dragons Woodrow, Dexter, Tehko (My first beardie Griffin who turned me crazy, and Erik my Rankins, who will remain a midget- deceased)
1.0.0 Cat- the regular variety (Dominic- fat cat)
0.1.0 Dog- Lab mix(Betty- escape artist extraordinaire)
1.0.0 Red Eared Slider (Franklin)