For anyone thinking about breeding.

I purchased 2 bearded dragons for my grandkids a little over a year ago. Not knowing any better I had them housed together. Turns out that I had a male and female. My female and male are now separated and she has layed two clutches of fertile eggs. The first 16 eggs all hatched and I was able to find homes for 14 of them mostly with friends and family, some I was able to sell. Did I make any money? Nope! I spent a lot more money, feeding them until they were old enough to rehome, than I made. The second clutch of 26 eggs all hatched as well. Healthy sweet little eating machines. They are now 3 weeks old and I've spent about 200.00 on food alone and they will not be ready for new homes for at least another 3 weeks. The bigger they get the more they eat so probably another 2 to 3 hundred on food. I never intended to purposely breed bearded dragons, but I love animals and didn't have the heart to dispose of the eggs. They are so cute, and it has been a rewarding, as well as sad adventure, as you never really know if they are getting the right care once they are no longer in your care. If you intend to purposely breed these sweet creatures just know that they are very easy to come by nowadays and unless you have some sort of special morph or color you can expect 10 to 20 dollars for each little baby. There really isn't any money in it. I'm grateful for the experience, but I'll leave the breeding to the more experienced breeders. :wink:

I agree with you, I quit breeding them a very, very long time ago for that exact reason. It is expensive to take care of them and there isn't any real profit in it. It's educational though, so I have taught others how to do it and I build incubators for anyone that asks me. My help is free, and it always will be. However, I do try to talk people out of breeding bearded dragons. I try to steer them towards other breeding goals. Bearded dragons are a good stepping stone towards more rare species....so what I teach/help with, can be applied to other species (and I hope that eventually it will be).
For awhile I wouldn't consider breeding anything that sold for under $500 each...I kind of broke my rule when I bought my breeding group of rankins dragons. If rankins get to the point that they are so popular that prices drop much...they will no longer be on my list of breeding goals.
I don't breed for profit...but if I lose money and babies get bad care because they are cheap/disposable animals, I am doing a disservice to the species...I'm causing more harm than doing good.

The lady that used to run the reptile rescue here in Anchorage said that bearded dragons are getting to be a lot like cats and dogs -- they breed too easily and there are more of them around nowadays than there are good homes available for them. So whenever she ended up with eggs, fertile or infertile, she would use them as food for other reptiles rather than let them hatch. At least reptile birth control is easier than mammal birth control -- all you have to do is don't incubate the eggs.

It's tempting to get cuted out by watching the babies hatch :love10: , but I never seriously considered letting either one of my reptiles breed because I knew I would have a serious problem when it came time to give away my "grandchildren" because I'd ended up with too many little mouths to feed. In general, I think that anyone who is considering letting any of their pets have babies should think long and hard about what kind of a future those babies are going to be able to have in terms of a good home. Kudos to both of you for having the good sense to quit before you did more harm than good.

Many, many years ago I hatched out a couple clutches of iguana eggs. An author of a book came over and interviewed me the day they started hatching. He asked if it was wise to breed a common species that didn't sell for much. At the time I wasn't too worried about that, captive breeding of iguanas was a very rare occurrence (less than 10 people had done it before). So I was more focused on doing something not many people had done before. The excitement wore off quick when I couldn't find homes for them. I then knew the point the author was trying to make.
Iguanas lay lots of eggs!! I think both clutches were over 60 eggs (I lost my breeding records in a move) and I couldn't sell them for $10 each. I think I sold 10 to a pet store for $40....it was about 30+ years ago so I'm not positive. But I know I didn't get much money for them.
At the time, bearded dragons were selling for $300 each so I obtained my breeding group through Germany. It only took about 5 years for prices to drop on baby dragons to $150 each. Then about a year later they could be bought for $75 each. At that point I quit breeding them, I wasn't going to make the same mistake I made with the iguanas. I then moved on to chameleons and uromastyx...eventually ending up with my gila monsters and beaded lizards. I doubt prices on them will drop to the point babies are ever considered disposable. They are not easy to breed or hatch. It takes a lot of effort and dedication...it also can take 8 months to hatch eggs. So it's unlikely there will be so many available they can be purchased cheaply. But if it does happen my breeding efforts will move on to something less prevalent....

Very well said! It's funny because 2 years ago I knew very little about bearded dragons. My grandson who's 6 wanted an iguana for Christmas, so I done some research on iguanas and quickly realized that an iguana wouldn't be the best choice for him, as they can be quite aggressive. So I continued to research the best lizard choice for him, and decided on a bearded dragon. I went to petco and bought this tiny bearded dragon and all the supplies it needed. Then I thought my granddaughter, who was 11 at the time, might like a bearded dragon too. I went to petsmart and purchased another tiny baby. I quickly fell in love with the little boogers. They really do have quite the personality and they wiggled right into my heart. Fast forward 2 years. I now am owned by 2 adults, 2- 4 month old babies that I wasn't able to sell, and 26- 3 week old hatchlings that will soon need new homes. I worry about them going to good homes because if people only have to pay 20.00 for a pet then they are less likely to provide proper care for that pet. Because bearded dragons are quite expensive to care for that lessons the odds of them being cared for properly The best that I can do is provide a care sheet with each baby, make myself available for any questions that the buyers may have in the future, and hope for the best for these sweet babies. On a happier note, I just finished my fourth outdoor enclosure so everyone will be able to enjoy the great outdoors and the warm summer sun.

I have a really good friend that kind of ended up with bearded dragons in the same way. She's in her late 70's and got her grandkids a couple bearded dragons. She eventually ended up with the dragons (not sure of the circumstances around that) and fell in love with them. She now rescues and rehomes them...she was interested in breeding them. So I did build her a couple incubators and showed her how to do it. However, I did stress that she had to use the information I provided her with responsibly. I told her I didn't want her breeding any "normal" dragons because they are not desirable and they are hard to find homes for. She has followed my advice and only produces specialty morphs, which she doesn't have problems finding homes for, she sells cheap. She also interviews people well before selling them a dragon.
She has had a lot of medical problems that have gotten much better since bearded dragons have become part of her life. She has told me several times if she didn't have her dragons she probably would have died by now. Im not sure that is true...but she insists it is. So she's saving dragons and the dragons are saving her...works out well for both of them.
I do keep trying to get her involved in different species, she really likes my gila monsters and beaded lizards. But the venomous part isn't very appealing to her. However, she was brave enough to touch some of the babies a few days ago.

Yes, good warning about breeding. The major bank breaker is feeding them. It seems that no other baby creature requires as much expensive food for a period of time as they are growing. People just don't realize it.There is a sticky thread at top of this page that deals with the same concerns.

Beardies were still selling like mad + easy to get good prices for all through the late 90's to 2005-7, [ or around that time ] where high color dragons still got a decent price and you could make a reasonable profit. Then the market became flooded with high color dragons, trans [ which gene mutation produced the sickliest + weakest dragons out there , I never got in to them ] and then that's where most of the interest went once they seemed to " stabilize ".

Bottom line is the market IS flooded and babies are becoming more difficult to sell and people lose interest in pets far too easily and buy them spur of the moment which gets us to the situation we see today.

In some ways, I'm in the same boat as your 70 year old friend, Rankins -- except that I'm 10 years younger. I once had a psychotherapist tell me that I "always need to have a little critter to take care of", after he heard the story of the effect that getting our snake had on my psychological well being. But I would add that if I have a little critter to take care of, I also need someone to help me take care of the critter when I'm not up to it, especially when it's more than one little critter, one of whom also comes with an entourage of live bugs who also need to be taken care of. Otherwise it's not fair to the critters. So I'm lucky my husband is willing and able to help, even though we're both maxed out now with one bearded dragon and one snake, believe it or not.