Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I was woundering if any body could give me some info on breeding these wounderful lizerds.

Buy a book. I would recommend the Bearded Dragon Manual by Vosjoli, Mailloux, Donoghue, Klingenberg, and Cole. Breeding dragons is hard, takes a lot of money up front, often does not turn a profit, and takes SO much time. From the moment the female turns her eggs over to you, you have to start worrying. You put them in an incubator, but what if your air conditioner goes out...you will lose the eggs. What if you house temp rises 5 degrees while you are out? You could lose the eggs(if you had been incubating at 84-85 degrees). If you manage to keep your home temp. within 5 degrees of the right temp for 2 months you get babies (and HUGE air conditioning bills). If your female is an average producer you get 60-200 eggs from just 1 breeding. They will come in groups of 20-40. After about 2.5 weeks my babies depending on size will eat 20-40 crickets a day EACH. So if you had 2 clutches totaling 60 lizards at one time(unavoidable) you are feeding 1800 crickets a day average.

How do they sell? You can get rid of lizards in bulk for $10 pretty easily. If you want to try for $20 you have to put a lot more effort into it...hours on teh internet dealing with people who e-mail you for a week then disappear. if you want a profit you HAVE to be ok with selling your babies to pet stores. I have not yet EVER seen a pet store who had their bearded dragons properly set up... they are usually on some kind of wood chip substrate with no UV lighting and 15 crickets running around the cage at all times. Very often they have a water dish for the babies to drown in. And several times I have gone to buy crickets at a pet store because my breeding group got a little low and when asked why I needed 1/4 inch crickets I would reply "bearded dragon hatchlings". A 15 year old store clerk would then point to a pitiful group of 4-6 week old beardies and say "we feed ours large crickets, then we don't have to give them as many". And I really hope that those are not somebody's prized babies that they protected every day since they put them in the incubator. I always try to tell them...but they give you that smile and say "they have always been alright before, but we will keep it in mind". Yeah right. THESE ALWAYS LOOK LIKE GOOD PET STORES.

I breed beardies. I have packed my babies into boxes and spent nights awake because I didn't like the sound of where I sent them. Sometimes I HAVE to move my stock, I try to be picky but there are SO many people selling dragons. Go here to see how hard it is to sell dragons:
http://market.kingsnake.com/index.php?cat=51

I breed because I love working with my lizards, and I believe they are the ultimate reptile. I don't try to make a profit, I just try to cover my expenses. I am not sure that I ever even come out even. Little things add up. UV lights only last 6 months, and lights and cages for one clutch of lizards costs $$$. It takes up BOTH of my spare bedrooms, and my adult lizards live outdoors during breeding season.

If this all sounds good to you, then good luck. Ask more specific questions, but buy some books. Before learning about breeding you should know get general dragon care down completly. You should be able to pick up any good dragon care sheet and know everything on it. You should know what to do for sick dragons. How to hydrate dragons. What kinds of greens provide what to the diet. You should know what to feed your crickets to keep up with your females "growing needs." Hatchling dragons are so wonderful though. If you are breeding them for your love of the species you WILL find it very profitable.

BUY THE BOOK.
My Dragons----- Click Here!