Reptile & Amphibian Forums

hi all
i have got loads of feedback recently about me housing 3 baby beardies in a 5ftx2ftx2ft viv as they are 7 weeks and 2x female and 1x male.
i had got them thinking they could all live together and assumed thats what they did in the wild but was obviusly wrong as i have been told the male is a no no living with the females,when is the best time to seperate them? and when the sex is guaranteed to be accurate i know one is definately a male you can see the two bulges and the dint in the middle easily the other 2 seem to be female which i am 98% sure of,they sleep ,eat and play together and seem to get on really well,they are all from the same breeder who has kept pairs safely for years from babies together?
any info would be great
thanks
nat

You will need to separate the male but you do have some time. Most beardies do not start expressing their gender until they are at least a few months old. In my experience you can keep babies under 5-6 months old together without problems. After that time the males realize their boys and start trying to mate with the females. This is just a rule of thumb, if your dragons are faster growers they may mature faster and need to be separated earlier than this. Look for head bobs and other aggressive behavior.

Depending on growth rate and size i try to have mine separated by 4 months just to be on the safe side. Also if I see any agression before then they get pulled.

Sean
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Heart Mountain Herps

If these are the same age,,, are they all brother & sisters? That is a NO NO. If they are related, you need to find a different male. It's no different than people inbreeding. All those foothill inbred jokes are not derived from 100% fiction. lol Inbreeding causes problems with the offspring. You'll hear many people say that reptiles are strong & it doesn't cause problems with one time cases etc. Unfortunately, especially with the dragons, there has been so much inbreeding from those people who say it's not a problem, and, there have been very few imports of dragons so most dragons here are some what related already. (not all, but the gene pool is very shallow here).

Most breeders who sell pairs from the same clutches, I think assume that the buyers know that they are intended to be repaired with another unrelated pair. (swapping partners in a sense "permanently" I wish more breeders made that point clear to their customers.

I hope, if they are related, you really consider the well being of the "gene pool" before allowing them to mate
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Joel R

Coming some day.
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