My daughter, who loves all creatures great and small, is angling hard for a bearded dragon. My husband is starting to cave, and that has usually meant that we end up with whatever pet is in question.
Now, up to this point, that has meant a betta and a couple of fire-bellied toads. Both of which were pretty cheap and easy to maintain.
I’m not sure I’m up to dragons (and, yes, the pet-keeping responsibility falls to me as my husband has no great love of animals, just a great love of our daughter).
Anyway, so here is a cute little skittery lizard that grows up into a pretty meaty reptile, I believe. Does anyone have experience with keeping these?
We would probably only have one, since it would be by far our most expensive pet set-up so far.
My daughter is 11, by the way, and we also have a 9-year-old.
Only reptile we’ve had that seemed to be aware of something besides itself. They’re neat pets, intelligent and friendly (you know, for a lizard). They do get fairly large, but not iguana large. 50 gallon tank seems to work well for our 2 year old beardie… or maybe 3.
They like to climb, at least ours does, but once he gets to his preferred altitude he’ll just sit there and wait for someone to come rescue him.
I have no personal experience, but my friend’s nine year old son has two. My friend babbles on about them and how much personality they have. He claims that they are low maintenance, but his “low” and your “low” may be at different levels.
Bearded Dragons are uncomplicated in terms of care, providing you purchase the proper equipment to house them. temperatures can be maintained by the use of a heat mat, and lights. Keep a digital or analog thermometer on the tank and place your lights on a timer. Other posters mentioned that they are omnivores, and will need calcium supplements. Be certain to feed them a varied diet rich in fruits, veggies and insects. They are truly a pleasantly dispositioned reptile, and with regular handling will soon become a lap lizard. Your children are old enough to begin learning about caring for their pets, and a dragon is a great lizard to start with. if you are afraid of the cost of the set up, (BIG tanks. NO wimpy starter tanks), then consider a leopard gecko. They are also friendly little lizards that do not grow so large and come in a wonderful variety of colors.
Thanks very much for the information. It sounds like something we might be able to do, eventually. I was aware of the temperature issues and size of the tank.
We have had many reptiles but not dragons. from what I hear they are pretty easy to take care of. Just be aware that most reptiles are carriers of salmonella. (http://exoticpets.about.com/cs/reptiles/a/reptsalmonella.htm) I always enforced strict hygiene rules, if you touch a reptile you wash your hands. period.
Kinda freaks me out to go to a zoo and see young kids being allowed to touch a snake or whatever.
I’d guess they get just over 2 feet long, but a good half of that is tail. 18 months, maximum to reach that. Ours got pretty close in the first year but kept growing slowly for a while after. I’ve never measured the beastie, so these are just guesses.
I think we have a high calcium substrate in his tank to reduce the need for fortified crickets. He loves blackberries (the fruit, he’s kind of a snob about answering email so doesn’t use a Blackberry).
We had two. We LOOOVED them. Like someone else said, it’s almost like having a dog. In fact, one of ours basically got the run of the house so to speak, she even got to sleep on the couch at night.
If you mosey on over to kingsnake.com and check out their bearded dragon area you can get a lot of good help. The one thing I can suggest is to get a Powersun (there’s another brand I don’t remember right now) bulb. It’ll provide the UV AND the heat. Point it right at a nice basking spot and get it up to the correct temp (110 F IIRC). I used a infrared themometer to check the temp of the basking rock. I think I had the light about 8 inches away from the rock, maybe 12. Also, we started out in a 40 gallon tank and upped to a 100 gallon or so when she started hitting the sides jumping off her basking spot.
A few more tips.
We used wheat bran (check feed stores for this) as the substrate. Cheap, easy to clean and digestable.
Watch your temps.
For our tank setup I wedged a 2x4 the short way into the tank. I filled one side with the wheat bran and just put a shelf liner on the other side. I set up the shelf liner side as a the basking side since she would usually crap while she was basking. That made it alot easier to clean up. Just wash off the liner and put it back in.
Here’s hoping my daughter wants one when she get’s older. I’d gladly have another one, we just don’t have the time right now.
Okay, so just how big is a 100 gallon tank? (I’ll probably surreptitiously check this out myself sometime in the next couple of weeks.)
We have a very good reptile store here, so we can ask lots more questions before we take the plunge.
I would like to know–how much interaction do they need once they are settled down? For example could we go away for a night or two and have it be okay as long as the tank and food were set up all right? No longer than that. Or would we need a dragon-sitter?
Geez, I can measuer it when I get home, but it’s maybe 2 feet front to back, maybe 4 or 4.5 feet across and 2 feet high, and probably over 200 pounds since it’s actually an aqurium so it’s built to hold alot of water.
As for leaving them alone, you’d have to have a timer on the lights for sure (you probably should anyways). Umm, two days would probably be okay, but I wouldn’t go much longer then that. After that I would see if you can get someone to stop in, make sure the bulbs arn’t burned out, a toss some food in their bowl (I used Rep-Cal Pellets*) and maybe clean up the poop if they want to. As far as interaction, I’m not sure they need any, but it seems like they do like it.
FYI 99% of them are great pets, but everyone in a while you’ll come across a not so nice one. We had one that tended to snap at people when they tried to pick it up, beardie teeth hurt.
Ask lots of questions and remember that if you ask a hundred people you’ll get a hundred answers, I usually just try to average them all together.
*I used crickets for a long time, but when to start buying them by the 1000 it started getting smelly and I switched to Rep-Cal Pellets. It was weird, they wouldn’t eat the red ones. But even when they were on pellets I still gave them mealworms, butterworms and silkworms regularly.
They’re reptiles, after all, so they can go a couple days without food. When we’re going to be gone for a while I dump in an extra bag of crickets and make sure his food and water bowls are full (some kind of special bearded dragon pellets). He seems perfectly content to lay on a log under the light as long as he has a full stomach. I don’t think they’ll suffer if no one plays with them for a few days. Ours does watch us when we come back, not that I think he’s glad to see us but after sitting around with only crickets for company, I think they are interested in the giant pink monsters with the food.
Timer for the light and a reptile heating pad thing under the tank in case the light burns out. Not in the tank, they can burn themselves on the things (I’m told). Or a good heated rock with a thermostat.
