Need Advice for a Rescue Beardie

I have been approached to take a beardie by someone I know. They have a friend who purchased a beardie for his kids and now the kids have grown up and are not interested...you can see where this is going. I have agreed to take him so hopefully this friend will contact me soon. I want to be ready for when he (hopefully) comes. I have seen some very small, dark cell phone pictures. This is what I know so far.

-He is about 5 years old
-Approx 38 x 16 to 18 inch tank, possibly smaller
-His spine and tail seem fine and he seems to walk fine according to the description
-Lots of stress marks all over
-No UVB light
-From the description, his heat lamp is probably too far away to be warm enough
-He is very grumpy
-No calcium supplements and no vitamin supplements
-Diet of lettuce, bacon (and possibly bacon bits) and the odd cricket
-Has not been handled in a long time
-From the looks of it the tank has not been cleaned in a long time
-His substrate is sand
-No baths probably ever

He needs to have his environment changed, but I am worried about doing it too quickly as it may stress him out. Please, any advice you can give me will be appreciated. I have never done a bearded dragon rescue before.

I do own my own happy and healthy (and very lazy :lol: ) beardie so I do have experience with beardies.

Thank you

First of all, I have to say that I am not experienced with rescues. However, if he has stress marks now,then it might be good to make changes and see if the stress marks improve.

Thanks for taking the poor fellow in. Bacon bits. That's a new one. I would suggest putting him in his new environment when he gets to your home. He will already be stressed from the relocation. If you change the viv over later he'll be stressed again.

I'm sure you probably know this, but hold off on the live feeders until he makes a pooper with good urates.
Salads with yummy veggies, like squash, would be great. Introduce bugs slowly so he doesn't throw them up.

Poor guy will probably think he's died and gone to heaven.

As others mentioned, he'll be stressed from the move regardless so it's better to get him into an appropriate enclosure with UVB, lights, etc. instead of trying to do it slowly.

Would recommend covering three sides of his enclosure and keeping him in a quiet spot for awhile to hopefully reduce the stress some.

Thank you for the advice. Much appreciated. I will try to keep you updated.