Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi All. I feel ultra bad because I have had these poor beardies for about 4-6 months now. I bought them from a guy who lives close to me and he had them breed for a while. He owned them and bred them till they had nothing left to them. When I came to his house, ALL of the beardies lived in one 40 gallon breeder tank and a really dirty cage. Yes, 1.3 females in ONE cage. I was aggravated because they had no room to be to themselves for alone time. The male of course was hassling the females to breed, and they just sat there and looked around like it was just a normal thing in life. We told the guy to give us almost half price because these dragons where thin, and emaciated. He agreed to this. They where so feather light, I thought there where about to die on me with in a week. I'm still learning about beardies and there feeding of what nutrition they need in there diet. I thought with a lot of greens, veggies, and crickets would help them gain all there weight fast. Of course everything was mostly dusted with Vit's and Calcium. Yeah they gained there weight, but not enough to be considered 110% healthy. I have gotten advice yesterday on how to help them gain weight and help out on getting to there healthy weight quickly and safely. It's more of a fatty food diet till they are at ideal size. I would like to hear other ways to help out also. I like to have a variety of opinions on how other people help to get there female beardies to gain there weight fast and safely. This opinion I got was pretty helpful.
I'm thinking about ordering my 1000 mealwarms and waxworms. Also my cricket order will be here on Saturday.

Thanks in Advance.
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1.2 Normal BCI
0.1 66% poss DH snow BCI
0.2 Pastel BCI
0.1 Pastel Het Albino BCI
1.0 Anery BCI
1.0 Striped Albino BCI
0.1 Salmon 66% poss DH snow BCI
1.0 Reduced Pattern Hog Island Boa BCI ssp.
0.1 Hog Island Boa BCI ssp.
1.0 Poss. Super Salmon BCI
0.1 DH striped Albino BCI

3.3 Ball Pythons

For adult dragons, getting them fat fast isn't healthy. Offer large portions of healthy greens and insects (crickets, superworms, silkworms, butterworms, roaches) instead of the more fatty hard to digest insects (waxworms and mealworms respectively). As adults shouldn't be getting more than 10% of their diet in insect food, the bulk of their food intake should be healthy greens, fruit, edible flowers (pansies, dandelion, hisbiscus etc) etc.

Feed more often to increase weight gain but keep in mind, it takes awhile to restore an animal back to ideal weight. High fat foods will put on weight faster but it would be just that, fat. Too much fat can be just as unhealthy for your dragon as too little, leading to fatty liver disease and pretty much all the same problems we get if overweight. For a more accurate way to keep track of weight gain is to weigh your dragons weekly and keep track of changes in weight. It should be gradual now that you are giving proper foods etc, but it will take more than 4-6 months, especially if the dragons were very emacipated when you bought them.

Not sure how you are housing them but keep them all separated so it is much easier to monitor how much they eat and get fecals for each of them. High parasite loads can also greatly affect weight gain, in fact it will cause weight loss despite eating alot.
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PHLdyPayne