Getting my first beardie, have questions!

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Rustyhook

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I'm about to get my first bearded dragon for my five-year-old son. I've owned an iguana before and had multiple paths but I had a couple questions about this one in particular if anybody could help. I going to build a pen for it approximately 6 length 7 feet tall by 2 and 1/2 ft deep and I'm going to section that off so that the actual living space or the pain will probably only be about 4 to 5 in height. Any general suggestions about what to build how to what to put in the pan or how to build it would be greatly appreciated but the main thing I'm really worried about is we are going to go to something called Repticon to try to I guess by the bearded dragon is that a good idea I seen that they have a lot of white multi-colored kinds of dragons are those good ideas to buy or do they have genetic defects because of the breeding basically most of my questions and unknowns have to do with where Hallen from who I should buy this. And I guess one more question are bearded dragons solitary or are they would they be happier in a pear any help would be greatly appreciated you can email me at rusticles 52384 at gmail.com thank you
 

KarrieRee

BD.org Sicko
Beardie name(s)
Hiccup he is 6 and Blaze is 4
To me the tank your building is going to be way to big -- but I am no expert -- as far as the last question bearded dragons should never be housed together -- the tank size to me would be to hard to keep temps the way they should be -- others on here that have experience w/ building tanks for their beardies can answer questions that you have asked --- and you can also check out the DIY board on this forum
Karrie
 

kmwilson042182

Hatchling Member
They are definitely solitary. I would not recommend housing two adults together. One will bully the other or dominate the food situation and one will suffer. You may hear differing opinions on this, but I would not recommend it. You can by no means keep two males together, they may fight to the death. If you keep a male and female together the male will harass the female for breeding reasons. If you keep two females together, likely one will still exert dominance over the other and one would suffer.

The cage you are building sounds very large. For a baby I would imagine that would be too big. You could section it off for a baby at first and let the dragon grow into it. Getting the heating and temperature gradients on that will be crazy too in my opinion. My enclosures are custom made 4'x2'x2' with sliding glass doors in the front. Some of them like to climb to a certain extent, but they don't really need an excessive amount of vertical space. Plus I have found my guy can be pretty clumsy at times and I would hate for him to take a 5' spill.

As for buying from a reptile show, it is definitely a good place to start looking. There will likely be several local or regional breeders there and maybe even some of the national folks depending on where you are. The main thing is to just find a happy and healthy dragon. If you do find a local breeder at the show, maybe you could ask to go by and view their facility and make sure all is up to par. There are also many reputable breeders that sell very nice dragons online and will ship. Right now their first clutches of the season have likely hatched and they are getting them to size to sell in late April and early June. It will pick up from there through the beginning of fall. Dragons Den Herp, Carolina Classic Dragons and Draggin Tails are breeders who have very good reputations and have been breeding and selling high quality dragons for many many years. There are others out there too. Just letting you know this as an option in case you are not satisfied with what you find at the reptile show. I have a leatherback from Dragons Den and he is completely awesome.

I do not have any experience with any of the white or paradox dragons. I have heard some rumblings that the selective breeding done by some breeders is believed to potentially cause some health or longevity issues. I don't know if any of that is true, but seems logical. You see health issues arise in pure breed dogs and other animals when breeders get involved for money, so I would imagine this is a real possibility for beardies too. A lot of the color morphs are just selective breeding for colors that already genetically existed so as long as the breeding is done responsibly I see no reason to shy away from a colorful dragon if that is what you want. When you start running into a dragon that has all kinds of genetic anomalies it would make me wonder if that was accomplished at the expense of the animals health. I don't know for sure though, but you definitely have to wonder.

Kyle
 
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