Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My boy is a little bit more lethargic over the past couple of weeks since the weather has changed. We took him to the vet, ran fecals, and the whole nine yards, nothing showed up. He is still eating very well, only he is slowing down on taking the prekilled rodents, and only taking live, but taking them very well, as well as worms and greens.

Could this be just a normal fluctuation for the time of the year? Nothing seems out of place. His mouth looks good, pooping well, everything like that. He is just acting a bit more sleepy than usual, but still alert.

Thansk!
Hunter

our beardeds do the same thing. last winter they became very lethargic, slept all the time, and rarely ate. Someone replied to my post questioning this behavior. He referred to it as brumation, and said a slow down is normal. We went with the program and reduced the daylight hours from 12 to about 8. After a couple months we increased the hours gradually and the beardeds snapped out of it. He said the slow down is a good thing, especially if you are going to mate the animals. I figured by keeping the 12 and 12 cycle we could fool them into believing it was an eternal summer, they didn't fall for it though. Somehow they know when winter is here. Hope this was helpful in some way. (I realize beardies and dragons are two different species so the behavior may not be the same in regard to the slow down period.) Dave in Chicago

Same thing going on at my house. Avanyu is eating very little. Same with Tripod. I have reduced the lighting to 6am-7pm effective last month and I'm knocking off another hour this weekend. December I'll reduce it one more hour for a month before I start increasing again. Some people go all the way to only 10 hrs. daylight. That doesn't give me any "play" time with them in the evening so I stop at 11 hrs. I also reduced daytime temps to 84F maximum but kept the basking spot at 90F. We had a lot of chatter on the RZ forum last year and most of us agreed it had to be seasonal since they were ALL doing it-even the U.K. reptiles. I don't think that CWD actually "brumate" but it appears that they most certainly make note of the changes and respond accordingly.
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dianedfisher@yahoo.com

My 3 CWD-Avanyu, Tripod and Drago