If you keep up with my posts you know I recently adopted (or was the recipient of) a 2.5 year old female Bearded Dragon. She is gorgeous! If you're not into reptiles you may not appreciate that last statement, but she is just genuinely beautiful both as a creature and as a lizard! God was really very attentive when he made these guys!
When I was a kid we played outside far more than the kids play outside today. We rarely stayed inside and that was even during the worst winters. We found places to hide that were warm, but we didn't want to be home. Mom found us work to do if we were home. Home was not really an option.
While we were out and about, and most likely this would be in the summer months, we found lizards to play with outside. Oklahoma is a uniquely situated state for a lot of things including the various species of reptiles. We have snakes, skinks, geckos, really cool lizards, and of course turtles. we have a lot of different species in and around the lakes, but there are many many lizards in the residential areas too because of the green patches of grass and sand. Growing up, one of the main staples as far as lizards go, was the "Horny Toad", officially called the Texas Brown Horned Lizard. They weren't all from Texas, mind you. Any of the spikey babies we found were Sooner born and Sooner bred; I'm sure of it.
The Horny Toad was my favorite to play with even if they did pee on you immediately, and you could kind of gauge it and hold their butts out a bit to lessen the impact. They looked like little armored dinosaurs, and they probably are. They were sweet, gentle, and never bit, and they fared well with us kids dragging them all over the place. They were secretly hoping we'd drop them so they could skedaddle off and never be seen again, but that rarely happened with me. I had a grip!
The Bearded Dragon resembles the Horny Toad in many ways. Where the Horny Toad is endangered now, the Beardies are not! You can literally buy them, rescue them, adopt them, and/or find them in the right places if you're traveling abroad. They aren't indigenous to Oklahoma. My Beardie girl is a captive born Sooner, but her "peeps" are (as most Beardie) from Australia. The vast majority of these lizards are found in the arid dry lands down under; Issy (Isabel de Brugh) is about two and a half years old. She'll live to be about 15-16 years old. She's in transition at the moment, having come from a fairly neglective situation.
The kids that had her before me are quite young. I'm not an expert on Beardies, by any means, but they didn't do anywhere near the basic research it seems and now I'm having to undo most of the damage. It's not a bad thing, and I don't mean any ill-will toward the kids. They are just young and couldn't afford the needed supplies and must-have devices that it takes to run a make-shift desert in your home. If you're going to have a Beardie, you'll need a tiny desert as well. In most cases, a 40-gallon glass enclosure tank with a well-secured lid is sufficient for the needed size. I'll upgrade to an 80-gallon tank once I move to a house/apartment that has an extra room that I can dedicate to the care of at least this reptile, but possibly more.
You'll need a heat source that is going to help the enclosure maintain a higher temperature, somewhere around 105 degrees, so that the animal can bask and feel comfortable. The source must have both UVA and UVB bulbs, and they do make one that has both. I opted for the dual lamp dome and have a 75w bulb for the UVA and a 10 for the UVB. If I need the 100w bulb I'll do that. I just want to see what the dome will do for now. She has been lumbering around 40w and both the bulbs were ceramic, not even with the needed UVA or UVB. Ceramic is good for heating only and should be used in a separate dome on the other side of the cage. She was in a very cold cage for too long. She's not eating now, she has been obese from having too many super worms (protein) and she's impacted, not pooping, and most likely due to the lack of heat in her enclosure. They really really need that heat to do any and all things bodily functional. They are cold-blooded. If they are hot they will hide. My girl has been really cool. Poor baby.
To do right by the animal you'll need to have two spots in the enclosure that are at different temps; one to bask on and one to hang out in if it's needing to cool or hide. You'll need a little hammock for them to chill on because they really love suspending themselves, and of course, you'll need water bowls and other things such as a food dish (optional but best) and little branches that they can climb on and/or scratch themselves when they are molting. They will need warm baths from time to time, belly rubs, lots of attention, and if you're really into spoiling the heck out of your lizards, as I am, you can put on some Celtic instrumental music for them to listen to throughout the day. I also play Italian Cafe type music and watch her stare at me! I think she prefers Celtic music if I'm honest.
What does a Bearded Dragon eat? In the wild when they are really young, they'll scarf down all the live bugs offered to them. You can pour crickets into the enclosure and watch them disappear quickly. As they get older the protein source is lessened and replaced with vegetation. I use green leaf salad, but not spinach. I also cut up butter squash, blueberries, strawberries, and carrots. She's been really stubborn since I've received her, so she's not eaten much that I can see. She can have an occasional super worm, but this one is way too heavy for that right now. When she is healthy I can reintroduce them and give them to her once a week maybe. She'll be on a salad diet for a while. (of course, you'll need to add calcium from time to time as you will with all reptiles.)
With any animal that is not a typical domesticated animal, you should do all the necessary research you can. Like any other group of people, those who raise and keep reptiles are picky and opinionated. You'll get dozens of folks telling you how very wrong you are, and it takes a rather tough skin to ignore their poor advice and fish out the good advice among them. For the most part, those who love dragons are good souls, but they can be rather prickly -- pun intended.
If you were to just go out and buy all the things you needed to get started with the Bearded Dragon, the first questions you would ask yourself is what age are you wanting, as the enclosures, heating source, food source, and other supplies will change as the animal grows. If you start with a cheaper smaller lizard, you'll need to add the bigger tank later, the bigger light sources, the better food, the hides will be larger, etc. Let me run down what it would have cost if I didn't have connections in the reptile world. Admittedly, I saved myself a little cash by adopting and by going to the stores I know about where I can purchase used supplies. Think Craigslist if you don't know any specific stores.
- Adult Bearded Dragon (male or female) $300
- 40-gallon tank with lid (new $150) $80 used
- Zoo Med dual 5.5" light source with lamps ($82 at store $47 online)
- Large hide ($65 in-store $30 used)
- Branches to climb (You'll need two, so $30 each at the store $30 for two used)
- Water dish (big enough to climb in) $45 at the store $20 used
- Bamboo hammock ($16.00 at store $10 used)
- Enclosure thermostat ($32.00 at store $10 used)
- Food (I cut mine from salad, but the dry food is $10 a bag)
Horny Toad (Wikipedia) top
No comments:
Post a Comment