Caught between impaction and egg binding

Hi everyone,

So I'm really frustrated. My beardie Tem is a girl, and it's starting to get to the age where she might lay eggs (She's a year old). She hasnt been trying to dig, but she is quite round and I started to get worried she might be gravid. Either way, it's something that will happen eventually.

So I made her a dig box. I got a big Tupperware and some plain soil and mixed it with sand until I could make tunnels that stayed. Well I put her in it yesterday and she immediately started taking huge gulps of dirt. I stopped her, and she looked at me for a little bit and then went back to eating it so I took her out. It's not that she was hungry, I offered her worms and she was uninterested. She does have a habit of eating her calcium powder plain, like I don't even have to dust her bugs with it, I can just give her a tiny pile and she will lick it up.

Help! What do I do? She will need to lay eggs eventually, but I don't want her to get impacted!

Hi Faye.....don't put her in a laybox until you actually see her digging around the tank....that would indicate readiness [ possibly ] to lay. For now offer oral fluids, applesauce , canned pumpkin [ no spice ] baby food prunes + squash. Any of those or a combo of them with 1/4 tsp. of veg. oil or raw honey will help anything pass through. A warm bath every other day , too.

Many beardies will have a taste of the laying medium but will quit after a bite or two, it should be no problem.

Thanks for the reply. I'm stressing out a bit less now. She ate a bunch of applesauce for me this morning and seems her usual self. Maybe when she actually needs to lay she will be more focused on that and less focused on eating dirt.