Breeding Beardies
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!
tracy g said,
February 15, 2009 @ 1:50 pm
hi, just wanted to let you know that the info you gave about beardies was really informative. I bought Rocky and i was not told about, uva lamp, calcium. All i got at the time was a tank, heatlamp and heatmat. It came as a package with my beardie. If i did not make the effort to read about the care of beardies, rocky would be dead. I will say i feed him locusts all the time, he likes parsley and broccolli, but the bugger will not eat anything else. How do i convince him that apple is good, greens r good. He is still quite the carnivore and he is now 2 years old. I think thats his age. As i said pet shop was very vague. So any suggestions. Just tried to give him carrot, and dandelion leaves.
Carla said,
March 18, 2009 @ 9:58 am
Hi, I just discovered this site, we are looking for young bearded dragon/s for our children. What is the difference between the breads? Do some make better pets then others? We notice in 2 different petshops that they grey ones were not curious about us as the red ones, but maybe it was more to do with the pet shops then the dragons. So we decided to buy directly from a breader such as yourself. Where abouts are you? We live in East London.
Thank you
Carla - oh! buy the way, how do they get on with cats?