CooperDragon":r5t6istm said:
If they inhale water it can cause problems, but if they are supervised and the water is shallow (about elbow depth or so) it's not really a problem. Sometimes they will drink from a
bath. They aren't worth the stress if they don't like baths. A lot of them do enjoy a soak in warm water though, and that's fine. I tend to reserve baths for when they walk through their poop or stink etc and need to be cleaned up a bit. I throw in a bit of Dr Bronners Baby Mild soap which seems to work well.
My oldest dragon so far was Rex. Nearly 6 years old.
My oldest skinks are George & Mildred (eastern bluetongue skinks , near 10 years old now, reared by me from about 2 moths old) , and Wriggles (rescued wild injured eastern water skink who was about 8 years old , I'd known and befriended in my yard as a baby , spent 5 years as a pet).
I currently have a very small and shallow water dish in with Caesar and Cleo, I never have more than 5mm depth of water in it, enough for Caesar who loves to have splashy
bath occasionally and even occasionally takes a few sips.
Cleo is has only being the dish a few times (each to leave a poo in the water), but when she last shed she also enjoyed a splash about until Caesar saw her in "his pond" and joined her , not enough room for him , so she was evicted from the pool.
My other dragons have not had water dishes once they reached 6 - 8 months old and were separated.
If the dragon's diet contains live insects that are gutloaded and salad , they should be getting most their
hydration needs from their food, my policy is to drip some water on the dragon's snout, if it's
thirsty, it'll respond by
drinking the water drops and I'll continue til the dragon stops licking he water. I'll do this 2 or 3 times a week depending on the dryness of the air / weather.
Baths were rare events for Rex, Puff, Toothless and Peppa, though Peppa loved to have a
bath and obviously enjoyed the experience.
Bathing my larger dragons was done in a plastic flat bottomed portable baby
bath and I regulated the water temperature to 28 - 32 degC. When hatchlings and juveniles,
bathing is done on the coffee table (
bath towel under a suitable sized clear sided tub ) .
Water in
bath never deeper than to cover the side spike frills and never two dragons in at once and always under strict supervision.
My policy is that when the dragon climbs out , the
bath is done.. Peppa loved her baths so such she refused to get out, I'd get her out and she'd want to go straight back in.