Extremely stressed beardie please help!!!

I’ve had Pip for around 5/6 months she she is roughly 7/8 months old, she’s always been super chill, naturally skittish but enjoys her interactions with me. Recently she has been going absolutely crazy doing behaviours I’ve never seen her do before. At first I thought it could be her shed but she’s done a full body shed and still stressing out. She’s constantly running around the tank, not eating, her colours can be really dark at times, and she erratically scratches and climbs the walls of her viv and the glass doors!

Her temperatures are all perfect, I’m constantly giving her fresh food which she ignores, I have her out once, twice or even three times a day! She gets baths every once in a while, because she seems to hate water. She is so sweet when she’s out of the viv but I literally can’t leave her for more than 10 mins without her going crazy! The reason I’m posting this under ER is she’s getting to the point of hurting herself, she literally hurled herself at the side of her viv and on another occasion managed to climb to the vents and fell off! She’s uninjured but I’m just scared for when she does something that does hurt herself as the way she’s behaving is starting to drive me crazy, not to mention putting her at risk!

Please help I love her so much but I can’t take this constant scratching. I’ve tried everything I can think of to make her calm down but nothing works. She is still a healthy weight but still not eating, if she does drop a lot of weight I will take her to the vet but that’s difficult for me to do due to location so I’d appreciate if anyone could offer a solution here first?

Hi Christie, this can really be stressful to you seeing her act like this and nearly causing injury . She should be O.K. though. Are you sure about her age ? That may be signs of wanting to lay eggs. This is not a definite answer but it's possible. Is she very large ? Post a few pics of her, here's how :

https://www.beardeddragon.org/useruploads/ Then use the XIMG to upload them


You might put a good sized container of damp sand/soil in the tank, like this with a piece of the lid cut off as an entrance :

https://www.beardeddragon.org/media/30026/full

If she DOES have eggs then she has somewhere to lay them and even if she doesn't , this box will give her a chance to burn up energy if she wants to. She may ignore it but it's good to have just in case.

AHBD":35wgup0c said:

Hi Christie, this can really be stressful to you seeing her act like this and nearly causing injury . She should be O.K. though. Are you sure about her age ? That may be signs of wanting to lay eggs. This is not a definite answer but it's possible. Is she very large ? Post a few pics of her, here's how :

https://www.beardeddragon.org/useruploads/ Then use the XIMG to upload them


You might put a good sized container of damp sand/soil in the tank, like this with a piece of the lid cut off as an entrance :

https://www.beardeddragon.org/media/30026/full

If she DOES have eggs then she has somewhere to lay them and even if she doesn't , this box will give her a chance to burn up energy if she wants to. She may ignore it but it's good to have just in case.

Click to expand...

I thought that myself, but I am 100% sure about her age. However she did go into brumation very young so I’m not sure if she’s an early developer - if that’s even possible.

I do have a medium sized box in her viv with a loose substrate to see if she would take some interest in digging, she won’t go near it. My aunty brought me a block of reptile specific dirt (I have no idea what it’s called) to try her with, I had it in for 2 days and she just seemed to get even more stressed and wouldnt go near it. I’ll attach some photos but she isn’t particularly large, still a baby.

If you think it would be worth it I could try her with the box of dirt again and maybe give it more time, thanks for your help.
(I don’t have any decent photos of her full size these are as close as I can get but I can take more in the morning)

Oh I see the problem, she wants to get out + watch her favorite show no doubt. :lol: JK, one thing it might be is how her uvb light is shining from the side. This can really bother their eyes so you might want to attach it to the top underside of the screen.

And I doubt she's carrying eggs but is just a very restless girl, that's pretty common with young healthy dragons. They do a lot of traveling in the wild but can't do it in captivity. She should get through this phase at some point, until then it's her youth + energy. There's still a slight chance that she has eggs though. And yes, you can put the box back in, did you sit her in it at all + does it have a cover ?

Ahahaha she loves her animal docs. Yeah I doubt it’s eggs, I sat her in it and she stood for maybe 30 seconds and jumped out then didn’t touch it after that. Maybe she’s just hyper and more active as it’s coming into spring and I’ve only really had her winter months. I’ll see what I can do about moving the UV light, thank you so much for your help!