Beardies are wonderful creatures - but they do like to worry their owners. Particularly new ones!
If you want advice on how to keep your beardie, or to understand what their behaviour means, or simply to chat to other bearded dragon owners please visit my bearded dragon forum at http://www.mybeardeddragons.co.uk/bdforum
Michael
Well, almost!
We still have two who are going to be picked up this weekend, and little Stumpy, of course, who’ll be staying as a pet. But from running around after 37 it’s suddenly gone very quiet!
I’m really missing the little un’s - it was great fun watching them, seeing the colours that seemed to change almost minute by minute! And watching their antics - the way they would climb on top of each other to get the hottest spot until suddenly there was one too many and the whole heap came tumbling down!
We’ve met some lovely people who’ve come to buy their new beardie pet - and hopefully will stay in touch with them to see how the babies turn out.
As Shrek and Fi’s first clutch we don’t know what colours the babies will eventually end up being, but their colouration as babies suggests they will be stunning.
Thought I’d post this as food for thought for those of you who would like to breed beardies.
We had 37 eggs hatch - 18 starting 26th November, and another 19 over Christmas. At the time of writing the babies are aged 12 weeks and 8 weeks, and I currently have 4 of the older babies, and 17 of the younger babies left for sale (Stumpy, of course, we are going to keep).
The babies cost me about £35 a week to feed - the number of crickets they need each week is astounding.
When you have a litter of pups or a rabbits for sale it is relatively easy to find homes for say 6 to 8 babies. But when you are trying to find homes for 36 it is a completely different story!
Everyone who has come to see the babies ends up buying one - they are growing fast, very healthy and tame, and good colours. But although I advertise all over the place (and that’s another cost, paid adverts!) it still is a hard job trying to find homes for them all.
Of course, I could sell in bulk to pet shops, but having seen how the local ones keep baby beardies I am concerned that they might not be looked after properly, or be sold on with the wrong advice. At least I meet the people the babies are going to (and what a lovely lot of people I have met!) and am able to give out a care sheet.
So before you think about getting a pair to breed from, make sure you can afford the babies that come along! This will be something you do for the experience, definitely NOT the money! And looking after so many beardies takes an awful lot of time!
Bearded dragons grow at an amazing rate. Although what you want to end up with is a 20″ plus adult bearded dragon, it is really satisfying to buy a small baby and see it grow almost before your eyes!
Since having started this website I get emails almost on a daily basis from people who have purchased a baby beardie, and who need help and advice on how to help it be healthy. I have become increasingly concerned about the advice given to people, particularly by some (not all, there are good ones out there!) pet shops and other suppliers, e.g. garden centres. I’ve also been looking as I go around shops, and find the conditions in which baby beardies are kept are really less than suitable. For instance, baby beardies should not be kept on sand as they can ingest it with their food, and end up with an impaction in their stomach - if this happens it is fatal. Yet take a look at young beardies for sale in shops - they are almost always kept on sand. And of course, the new owner, not knowing any better, thinks this is an ideal substrate for them!
This weekend i saw a pretty, but unspectacular (i.e. not expensive morph) for sale in a local pet centre not only on sand, but also without any veg - there were no crickets in with it, but there were a few unsoaked bearded dragons pellets. It was being sold for £97.50 - and I had to wonder what advice would have been given to the poor person who parted with that much money for it.
Advice on buying a beardie
If you want to buy a young bearded dragon go straight to a breeder. Many, like myself, give away care sheets with the beardies, and will always be there should you need advice. I think my beardies are a lot prettier and more colourful than the one in the above pet centre, yet are being sold for only £35, so as well as getting better advice, it will be cheaper too.
Breeders don’t sell expensive accessories, so we will be able to advise you what you need to help the baby grow into a healthy adult. Breeders will advice you keep your baby on plain old kitchen towel for some months - and won’t try to sell you calci sand which is potentially fatal.
Males and Females
A lot of people like to have a male and female, and hope that they will breed in the future. But you do need to remember that it is very difficult for all but the most experienced breeders (which I certainly am not!) to sex with any reliabilty before the beardie is at least 4 months old, if not older. Also, never buy a male and female from the same clutch if you want to breed - they will be brother and sister, and the strain will be weakened. You may end up with deformed babies, or with problems that aren’t visible to you. It is not fair to try and sell these on to other people - would you like to buy a baby that was less than perfect?
If you want to buy a pair which will eventually breed accept you may need to get these from different breeders, at different times. As long as you match them in size this shouldn’t be too much of a problem.
Your beardie should be your companion for 10 years or more - to avoid problems and disappointments you owe it to yourself, and to your beardie, to make sure you purchase him/her from the healthiest stock you can find, and from someone who can give you, if you need it, the best advice to give him/her the best start in life.
Should have posted about this earlier - but cleaning and feeding 37 babies keeps me very busy!
On the 23rd December the first baby of the second clutch hatched - seemed he couldn’t wait for Christmas! No more movement for a couple of days, then heads started poking out on Christmas Day, and by the end of Boxing Day we had another 18 hatch. 19 from the second batch in total - just two eggs failed to hatch. We were very pleased with this first breeding attempt.
All the seond lot of babies are healthy - none deformed in any way, and all perfect. Lovely colours, just like the first lot. Now 3 weeks old, they are growing, shedding and eating well. The food bills for crickets for all the 37 babies is costing a fortune.
4 of the first babies have now gone to new homes - I’ve heard from the first people who bought a pair, and they seem to be settling in very well. They are called Magic and Eddy - Eddy after Eddie Murphy who did the voice over for Donkey in the film Shrek, so a nice link back to Shrek and Fiona there. Nice to think they are happy in their new home.
We have 18 babies now! All are in the new vivarium. Just 3 eggs remain out of this batch, but I’m hoping that they will still hatch, just being a bit lazy. For Fi’s first clutch, and our first attempt at breeding though I’m not too upset at getting 18 even if we don’t get the full 21!
They had their first real feed of crickets today - they had the hunting instinct, but weren’t too accurate at first, sometimes missing the crix they lunged for. They got the hang of it quickly though - even the one who turned tail and fled when a cricket ran after it!
When I went to get the crickets I found a pet shop wants to buy the whole lot off of me - I’m not too sure of them though, as I’ve seen them selling babies as young as 2 weeks, and I certainly don’t want mine to be sold that young. I’ll be keeping them for a lot longer, and want to make sure that they go to the best of homes.
Here are some pictures of the babies in the vivarium:
On the 26th November, 72 days after being laid the eggs finally started to hatch! Went to check on them as usual and couldn’t believe it - little heads poking out! 
These first pics show the babies hatching - the first ones took 12 hours to fully emerge from the eggs
This next picture is of the first 7 being transferred to the new vivarium, approximately 24 hours after the eggs started to hatch. They stayed in the incubator until they had fully absorbed the yolk sac, and were running around.
The following day another 9 hatched! Only 3 more eggs to go, and one of those already has signs of hatching. I am so pleased it is turning out so well. Will post pics of the babies in their new vivarium very soon
60 days gone now - eggs could hatch any time from now on. Lost one egg to mould last week, so keeping fingers crossed we won’t loose any more!
Spent a fortune on new vivariums so we’re ready to go when they do hatch - starting to get a bit anxious, but they look healthy enough at the moment!
Can’t wait to have the little ones running around!
Fiona laid her second batch of eggs on Friday, 12th October. This time she laid 21 eggs to make a total of 43! All eggs are doing well, so we don’t seem to have lost any from either batch.
We were slightly better prepared this time around, and put a cat litter tray full of damp sand in the vivarium. Fi dug a hole in this and laid her eggs. The top pic is of all the eggs in the incubator, and the bottom pic is of a very gravid Fi!
23 days on and all the eggs are doing fine. Temp in the incubator is keeping between 82 and 83.5 fahrenheit so pretty stable.
Once again Fi looks like a bag of marbles, and poor Shrek is just trying to keep out of the way! Fi is dashing around the viv makind a huge mess of things, but although she has got a sand tray in there she’s not started any digging yet - just doesn’t seem to know what to do with herself.
Here’s hoping for Shrek’s sake that she lays them soon - he has made himself as small as possible and is hiding just so he doesn’t keep getting trampled on!