Broly the new super saiyan beardie

SHBailey

Gray-bearded Member
Hi –

So a couple of weeks have slipped by, including my husband’s time off last week, and here it is Friday of his first week back at work already. He has another week off around memorial day, and then he’s off again the last week of June. His employer has a fairly generous time off policy, but it’s “use it or lose it” before the end of their fiscal year in June, so he tries to save it up for the summer.

Anyway, we survived his first “staycation” – managed to get a few things done, but not as much as we originally hoped, as usual. It was actually pretty nice to have him home for a change.

Football season starting up again already :eek: – it seems like we just got done with the last Super Bowl. But I was pretty badly depressed for the first couple of months of this year, and the rest of the world just kept on going by without me while I “hibernated.” :( It almost feels like I got “resurrected” around Easter time, :blob5: but I don’t know how long it will last this time around. I never do.

The guys who worked in the warehouse at one of the places where I worked (the best job I ever had, lasted 11 years before I burned out and had to quit) used to play football on their lunch break, and the office folks, including me, would watch them out the windows. The shop foreman usually got to be the quarterback, of course.

Sounds like Broly is still suffering from a bad case of hormones. If so, you can be happy that you have a nice normal healthy adult male beardie. And you get to put up with the craziness in the meantime. :mrgreen:

Oreo is getting old? It seems to me like you just got her maybe a few months ago? I must have lost track of time again. Anyway, I’m glad the enzymes help.

Gee, maybe a guitar isn’t the right instrument for a bipolar person after all. I’d quit playing when I get real depressed and then I’d be breaking in a new set of calluses every time I come out of it and start playing again. I’d have to try real hard to learn that “guitar-playing-as-coping-strategy” thing. So far, the new guitar store in Anchorage is still no more than a “coming soon” sign at one end of the local shopping mall.

Puff is doing his usual midday napping – I posted more details about him on my other thread. I hope he’s not getting too serious about trying to actually brumate for the first time in his life, but we’ll cross that bridge if and when we come to it. So far, he’s still eating and pooping (although a little less than what we’d gotten used to in the last few months) and not showing any other obvious signs of illness except for the lump in his wrist that thankfully turned out not to be cancer – so far so good. :)
 

BlueDragon09

BD.org Addict
Original Poster
Hey,

It was real hard starting out for me too. Depression took me down and I would stop playing as well. Every time I started up I would need new calluses to keep my fingers from hurting. It was hard but I learned to not let it take me down because the soreness of the fingers sucked. Sometimes it can't be helped you stop playing (leaving town or sick). My mom said "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger." I learned to live by that. Depression did not kill me though I had thought of it in my teens mostly when I was 15, 16 yrs old. I had knives and scissors I then looked to guitars. I picked my (now 10 yr old) guitar and didn't stop trying to learn a song unless it was absolutely necessary. I didn't start actually playing till I was 21 yrs old.

Broly is still going strong with the running and between gaining 1 to no grams. He isn't trending endlessly downward in weight. He eats, craps and runs daily.

Oreo we got April 2018. I was told she was 5-6 mos old then which does make her 1 yr and a half. Idk how right that estimate of her age is but she is dull in color. She waddles (like my last hamster, Ash did at that age) when she walks and Tom has already checked her out through a physical. Fecal test came out negative her weight isn't bad and appears in good health. Eyes and ears are clear too. We let her do what she wants. She is sleeping more than she used to and since she isn't sick she's old. She'll wake up, eat, drink and use the bathroom. She'll run her wheel and runabout ball and she loves our attention and we give her as much as we can.

I have to take an anti fungal because my athlete's foot was caused by toenail fungus. I let my toenails go infected too long (I had no idea I read yellow and crumbling nails is a sign). Im taking milk thistle since the pill Im taking can mess with my liver though I have no existing or active liver problems. It's a two week round of pills and it's messing with my period. It either will not come during my treatment or become irregular during this time. It was coming but stopped before it was going to start up. I have no idea why.

It seems my uvb fixture for my t5 arcadia is acting up so it's getting old I guess. I have to talk to my sister (she has amazon prime) and ask if she can get two day shipping on it. Luckily it's happening as it's warming up as opposed to last time where it was cooling off and no sun. I will have to get Kane in the sun and might as well change Broly's uvb fixture too because if his goes out MBD immediately starts up. Broly's prone to MBD starting almost immediately if no uvb exposure due to either light or sun. Remember he's inbred, so it's easy for his MBD problem to arise quickly even if you did a good job up till now.

I saw Detective Pikachu and omg it was cute that's about all it had going for it. My nephew (he's 8 yrs old) loved it because he likes Pokémon. He's going to drag me to see Pokémon the first movie remake all that CGI glory LOL. Lucky for him my favorite is always Mewtwo. I know there's others that are tougher than him but he remains my favorite since the original 1999 animated version.
 

BlueDragon09

BD.org Addict
Original Poster
Hey,

Well, Broly is now done running around but lost 16g last week without running or a stool present. Two days later he gained 6g, strange but Im happy he gained anything at all. He does eat and stools aren't messy or really smelly. We had done a fecal and it checks out negative. The weight loss wasn't because of parasites/worms. Active during the day and sleeps well through the night. No continuous black beard only sometimes but he is shedding multiple areas so the dark beard maybe because he's grumpy. It does lighten up so that's good. We had bloodwork done and it checks out as well organs work. The strange weight loss and the extreme hunger is weird. We had ct scan today and there's nothing to explain it. No tumors or masses. Either....he's just really hungry because he's shedding (he's not growing so not likely?) or something just isn't showing up because it's too small (Idk really). For now, they said keep an eye on him he sounds healthy. Ugh, as usual no freaking answers!

Saturday (May 25) I turned 32...and I got some neat stuff. Mostly anime and a new comforter (coming tomorrow or Wednesday) it's Jurassic World comforter...I like dinosaurs... My aunt and uncle gave me a plush Black Panther (the Marvel one) and yes I love comics too. My sister however gave me Pokémon Ash's hat from the series of 1998. I wear it everyday to help cope with nervousness if I feel like someone is looking at me. My brother in law pre ordered Slipknot (as they got a new album out Aug 9) for me. My parents got me a Slipknot poster, it's on my wall now.

My brothers bday is coming up (May 30) he's turning 24. I gotta find what he likes. We're definitely seeing Godzilla as a late gift as it comes out May 31.

I guess that's it for now...see y'all in a few weeks possibly.
 

SHBailey

Gray-bearded Member
Yes it seems like I don’t get around to posting more often then every few weeks anymore these days. Sorry about that… :oops:

Happy 32nd birthday. :) I can remember that when I was 32, I was at the height of my career as a system administrator at a small company in Southern California, and if some fortune teller had told me that 30 years later I’d be married to the love of my life, living in Alaska, and that I’d have a bearded dragon instead of a cat, I’d probably have told them they were crazy and demanded my money back. You never know where life’s going to take you. I guess I qualify as an old stick-in-the-mud now. When did that happen? :?

I always have to remind myself that when you put a beardie on a scale (or any other animal for that matter, including humans), you’re not just weighing what’s part of the beardie (bone and muscle and fat reserves and organs, etc) but also stuff that’s just passing through (food and water and poop) so it can be hard to figure out if you’ve got any real weight loss worth worrying about. It sounds like you’ve run the gamut of testing just about anything that could be wrong with Broly so you can probably figure that his weight loss was just a fluke and that he’s basically healthy. And even though 16 grams may seem alarming, it’s actually only around 3% if his usual weight is around 500 (I did the math :wink: ), so maybe not hugely significant as long as it didn’t continue and he gained some of it back the next time you looked.

We always weigh Puff after his bath (when he is most likely to have pooped) and before his meal, and my husband has been charting his weight on the computer. He has a little system of color coding the dots and lines on the chart depending on whether or not Puffie pooped right before he got weighed. Forntunately, Puff’s weight has been fairly stable lately (more about Puff on my other thread).

Anyway, I hope Broly stays healthy and doesn’t scare you with any more unexplained and/or significant weight loss.

My husband has had the week off this last week but goes back to work day after tomorrow. He’s out mowing the lawn now – all this extra daylight makes the grass grow really fast, but we get lots of dandelions for Puff too. :)
 

BlueDragon09

BD.org Addict
Original Poster
Hey,

I figured an update 12 days later...

Broly's shedding a lot of body parts which some are done and some arent. I had to take him and his stuff out so I can vacuum the skin off the tiles. It's a real mess. He still eats like no one ever feeds him.

The weight is returning slowly. He gained 2g making a total of 529g. No unexplainable weight loss this time. It might have been the scale going through some interference that day or something. The collards are finally coming through as he had dark green stool. They're usually orange and green mixed sometimes brown and dark green. Mostly orange.

My aquatic frogs, i have more tadpoles...I kept the first batch of children because I wasn't sure if I could keep them alive. Second batch is going to good keepers not someone who's gonna throw them in ammonia filled water and complain I killed them. Im gonna test their knowledge and ask to show tank parameters. I already have three people who are interested and already showed me what they know and their tank params. I explained they've bottom feeders and food must sink. Sometimes the males will sing so if they're light sleepers they might wanna move the tank out of their bedroom. I find the sound quite soothing like a lullaby.

Good luck with Puff. It does sound like he's slowing down.


I guess that's it.
 

SHBailey

Gray-bearded Member
Hi…

Puff looks like he’s getting ready to do some shedding too, but not much is coming off yet so I haven’t got the mess to vacuum out of the tank so far. It’s on his back and shoulders where he’s shed before fairly recently and also where they injected him with the latest round of antibiotics a couple of months ago, so I figure it might be a reaction to that. His tail still looks like a shedding disaster area, but at least it’s alive and well.

He’s definitely slowing down and maybe trying to brumate for the first time in his life in the middle of the summer (ok, technically it’s still spring, but everything's green and daylight around here so it’s just as good as already summer), but he still eats and usually basks for at least a few hours after a meal, so not completely comatose yet. His weight was 539 grams after his bath this last Saturday, up from 520 last week, but he hadn’t pooped in the water. Instead, he plopped a nice big healthy looking one on his freshly cleaned basking platform a few hours later (and stepped in it before we got to him :banghead: ) – probably just about 19 grams worth – so his weight is more or less stable.

After we cleaned it up and put him back in his tank, he turned his very happy golden color. I’m not sure if that’s because he’d been snuggling under “daddy’s” shirt while I put the stuff in the tank back together, or because he’d gotten both of his human slaves to rush over and clean up after him right away. Either way, another typical Saturday afternoon at the Bailey’s. :roll:

Bearded dragons do seem to be able to poop in just about every color of the rainbow. Last spring when Puff lost all that weight and got hungry enough to eat veggies, his turds were big and green. My husband thought the food was going right through him but the vet set it looked like it was getting digested – we just weren’t used to seeing that. Now that he’s back to his comfortable weight, he’s back to eating mostly bugs and very little greens, so his turds are usually brown, and sometimes a little orange if he eats some butternut squash.

I think you’re doing a very good thing for your little froglets by making sure that their new human slaves will know how to properly take care of them. :)

I’ve never had frogs but I get the lullaby from chirping crickets too. Reminds me of summer nights in California (but luckily it’s not that hot here), and also reassures me that we have food for Puff for tomorrow. My husband has lost some of his hearing in the frequency range where they chirp, and he can barely hear them, so they don’t keep him awake either.

Ready for another rousing week catching up on Puffie laundry... :wink:
 

BlueDragon09

BD.org Addict
Original Poster
Hey,

Would have replied sooner but we had nastiest heat wave here. At least close to 100s so the dragons couldn't go outside and since no air conditioner here in the house the reptiles were left in the dark as it was too hot for any overhead lights for about five hours. They even ate in the dark! Im not a fan of heat too much unless there's a way to get the hell away from it which there isn't. My fish/frog tanks had their heaters off had to give my horses cool water every hour till the sun went down. My african grey needed a bath in cool water. It was a mess! Everyone was hot.
It's cooler now though.

My hamster was the only one in trouble with heat. She was on her side with rapid breathing! She was very hot!! I gave her a carrot doused in cold water and gave it to her. She recovered in an hour. Like with the gerbils and hedgehog she got a cold pack to snuggle up to being switched every two hours.

Broly's mostly done with sheds. Still one patch by the tail base and on top of his head, that's it. He's also gained 8g puts him at 537g. I did say going up slowly. I had to clean out the tank today, skin everywhere mostly. You just can't keep up with all the falling pieces. Broly's 4 years old, 20" long and we're working on weight with him. He'll be 5 January 2020.

Kane's bday is July 11 turning 3 yrs old. He's our youngest. He's doing well, eating, bathroom all good. He's done growing at 25" long. 689g. He's lost weight from a mild load (+3) of worms (not coccidia). We got that taken care of with acidophilus (probiotic so he would continue to eat). Im a pro with illnesses thx to Alucard (rip buddy thank you for everything). I know what yellow fungus looks like and how it starts out and RI too.

Jamie is 21" long, 5 yrs old turning 6 September 12. Our oldest. Great eater, has a whole bedroom with tiles to herself. We have a steam cleaner because she has adeno.
She reached adulthood with adeno so obviously gonna live a long life. She's aggressive when boys walk by her door. Her door is glass and she can see out and it was closed so nobody goes in and she doesn't come out when it's the boys turn. Both boys don't have adeno and I plan to keep it that way. I steam clean everywhere she walked so it's safe for the guys, so far it's working they're not sick.

I have crickets singing too not just frogs.

My scorpion is doing pretty well even though it was hot.
I believe he's an emperor something...the name escapes me. We have a "pet" (not really) female wolf spider. Big girl and hunts down the bug escapees. She stays in the reptile room. Don't worry she doesn't bother the reptiles she stays in her own corner away from them. Been around two years. If she's in a good mood she'll come down and you can pet her. Bad mood she'll stay up in her corner. I give her a bug if she's grumpy. We have jumping spiders, yellow and blue. They don't do much. They stay away from our wolf no doubt she'll destroy them.

Hope you all enjoy this TLDR...sometimes short sometimes not.
 

SHBailey

Gray-bearded Member
Hi,

No need to apologize for late replies or TLDRs – I’m even more guilty of both. :oops:

Wow. :shock: I didn’t know you could get heat waves that bad in Oregon – sounds like some of your critters were in real danger. I guess the hamster and the horses and the bird especially needed extra help. I’m glad to hear that you got them all through it and that it’s cooled off since then. :)

You’ll probably laugh, but here in Anchorage we call it a “heat wave” if the temperature goes much above the high 60’s or low 70’s, and it rarely does. We had a couple of summers a while back when it got into the 80’s and everyone was complaining about the “heat.” :roll: I did have to turn off the heat lamps for the snake in the afternoon on a couple of those days. We didn’t have the beardie yet back then.

Broly and Puff are just about the same size, except that Puff is a couple of inches shorter and he lost some weight this week, but that was after he pooped in the bath so no worries yet. He’s still napping most of the day and wasn’t hungry on Saturday, so I still think he may be trying to brumate for the first time in his life. I hope it’s nothing more serious than that, since I never know what the adenovirus is going to do next. I hope Jamie can cope well with it. Kane’s a big guy, and I’m trying to remember – did you say he’s a German giant?

We were always as careful as we could reasonably be to keep Puff’s adenovirus away from Squirmles (our corn snake) even though we don’t know for sure if what he has is bearded dragon specific or if a snake could have caught it from him. Apparently we did ok because that wasn’t what Squirmles died of in the end. All the evidence suggests that he was inbred, so he was probably lucky that he lived as long as he did.

We seem to have a small population of resident spiders in our house. I don’t know what kind they are but I let them be whenever I can because I figure they’ll take care of the flies and mosquitoes and other things that come in here, especially in the summer. None of them are big enough to do much about escaped crickets and roaches though. There’s one that tends to hang out in the bathtub so we sometimes have to make sure that he(or she?) is out of harm’s way before we take a shower.

We had a pleasant weekend – mostly nice weather with comfortable temperatures and just a little rain. “Daddy” splurged and got Puff some hornworms, which he very much enjoyed on Sunday afternoon. :blob8: We have one little bitty one left, so we can probably afford to keep it for a day or two and let it grow a little. Otherwise I know that hornworms can get really big really fast. We’re stocked up on a few crickets and a lot of roaches too, at least enough to last us for the next week or two, especially with Puff at his comfortable weight and not eating huge amounts lately. Ready for another week, and then my husband has the following week off, and that will take care of his “use it or lose it” vacation time just before the end of their fiscal year. :)
 

BlueDragon09

BD.org Addict
Original Poster
Hey,

This might be TLDR Im not sure.

Kane is part german giant, mostly standard type as far as morphs go. He's also citrus with orange, red and a deep yellow on his beard.

Summer is just around the corner and we've had great weather. Some rain in the beginning of spring but it's mostly gone till fall. Rain will come back in three months...and that's not very long...months just fly by.

Broly has lost 5g and he's down to 532g which isn't a huge deal! He's either up or down. For someone who doesn't have adeno he's got a mess of problems with mbd and his insides. Diarrhea does happen every two weeks and that's just how it works with him. He had a kink in his loop of henle and it kinda left a weird look like something been tangled too long. Water and food pass through too quickly through that area and that's just an opinion of why diarrhea happens more often than I would like. Shedding has finally stopped he has a couple scales that didn't go but I can keep up on a few scales.

July 17-20 I will not be home at all. I'll be at Universal Studios Hollywood. My dad and brother will take care of our three dragons. We have a friend living at our house to take care of the others. Tom isn't as over protective as I am about my dragon (Broly). The other two dragons are Tom's.
I enjoy Kane and Jamie as much as he does but the only one I really became attached to is Broly got him in 2015 and consider him my actual son. Hell matter of fact is we should worry about him he gets more vet visits than the other two. He has always something weird going on. I don't mean to sound like a bad person for not really worrying about Kane and Jamie (seriously when have they gone to the vet for multiple issues?). Broly ends up going and Im hoping during the four days he doesn't have my dad go to the vet because I love my dad but he completely wouldn't understand what the vet said. My dad can't hear very well so that would be a bad situation. I guess you understand my issue with leaving my son in others responsibility. He's mine and should be mine alone if something goes wrong I feel like doing something instead of relying on a part time caretaker. If I wanna see my friends I have no choice. Stupid rant about something that isn't happening yet. My dad just has the mindset of any other parent "he's your pet you take care of it." At least he doesn't have the standard "let it die it's just a lizard." My mom is different and she will go to the vet and understand what's going on. Im having mom,sister, best friend and Tom come with me to Hollywood. My brother and dad didn't wanna go so I said take care of our dragons they said ok. My brother kinda understands what needs to happen. I just realized to make three days of calcium I'll have to do it that Sun the week I leave. Usually it's Mon - Wed but that week will have to be Sun-Tue. Leaving Wednesday early morning and coming home Sat afternoon or evening Idk which.
 

SHBailey

Gray-bearded Member
Happy summer solstice… :D

Summers fly by pretty fast around here too. The days will already be getting shorter now, but we still won’t notice it for a little while. They’re predicting a “heat wave” :wink: with temperatures in the low 70’s for the next few days. My husband and I are planning a day trip on Monday to visit some friends – “real Alaskans” who live outside the city. Hopefully it won’t be too “hot” :roll: to hang out with them for the day. We should be home in time to put Puff to bed for the night, but he’ll probably sleep through most of the day anyway. That’s what he’s been doing lately. :sleepy2:

Kane sounds like a pretty dragon. :love10: Puff has a little bit of yellowish-orange around his eyes, so he may have a little citrus in him, but he’s mostly normal colored. We don’t actually know anything about his ancestry since he was a rescue.

Since water has weight, I’m wondering if the fluctuations in Broly’s weight might not have something to do with hydration, since he has issues with his kidneys. Maybe his weight drops a little when he dumps a lot of fluid, and goes back up when he’s well hydrated? :? Just an idea, but if that’s the case then it might be normal for him for his weight to go up and down a little bit now and then.

We’ll find out where Puff is at later today. Standard operating procedure nowadays is to weigh him weekly, after his bath (when he’s most likely to have pooped) and before his big Saturday meal. We hadn’t been monitoring his weight up until last year because it had been stable, but we’re not going to get blindsided by a huge weight loss like that again – we’ll have him back to the vet before it gets that far gone, not that there’s necessarily anything that can be done to save him if the adenovirus takes another turn for the worse, but we would at least try. I feel bad that I didn’t realize he was losing so much weight until it got that bad – you don’t notice gradual changes when you see them every day, so I should have been watching the numbers. I was happy he was eating his greens all of a sudden but I should have realized sooner that it was too good to be true. :( Normal for Puff is that he’s only interested in greens when he’s mortally hungry. The bottom line is the fact that his appetite kicked in when it did probably saved his life. So we’ve learned our lesson; we’re keeping a watchful eye on his weight now.

Its been a long time since I’ve been to Universal Studios – probably as much as 30 years. They’ve probably added all kinds of newer more fun stuff since the last time I was there. :blob5:

I don’t blame you for worrying about Broly while you’re gone, but it sounds like he’ll be well taken care of and you’ll have everything ready. At least your dad and brother care about the beardies and have some understanding, even if they’re not experts. It also makes sense to me that you can do all the worrying about Broly and let Tom do the rest of the worrying about Kane and Jamie, especially since Broly has lots of “special needs.” I worry that way about Puff too, and he’s like an adopted child to my husband and me, so yes I can understand. We try not to be gone for more than one night if we go anywhere, otherwise we have to have someone come in to take care of him. So far we had to do that only once since he tested ADV positive, back when I was in the hospital in Juneau this last January, and we were gone for two nights in a row because our return flight got weathered in and couldn’t leave until the following day. :banghead: Spent the night at the airport, but we were lucky we had a friend who was willing and able to come in and take care of Puff until we got back.

Ooh – another TLDR. :oops: Oh well...
 

BlueDragon09

BD.org Addict
Original Poster
Hey,

Im not sure what's causing Broly's weight gain/loss. It's really not a big deal. I just don't like leaving longer than at least three days. Im gone only four days this year, then home rest of the year.

Kane is gorgeous. He was really yellow as a baby and as he grew orange and red started popping out.

Puff won't mind if you leave all Monday he won't even care.
I don't get any downtime in winter. Two dragons asleep to wake in February. One is awake just slows down somehow eats like a pig. Puff will be ok.

I was at Universal when I was 29, they definitely added a few things. Jurassic Park ride is now Jurassic World ride and Idk if it's up and running guess I'll find out.

Well I caved in, Im getting sarracenia (American pitcher plant) it's a dark burgundy color but it's a baby (small plant and seed grown). It won't have much color and it will live outside near the cobra. My tropical pitcher (looks like cups full of water but really just digestive fluids) lives under our tree with a grapevine behind it. That plant is about four years and still going strong. My backyard looks like a carnivorous plant haven as I have different types. Venus flytrap, cobra lilies, tropical pitchers, winter growing carnivorous plants, marston dragon sundew and now a sarracenia coming Wednesday (usually two day shipping because it's warm and may die if longer). Im pretty excited about our new friend. My wasp will hopefully stay away from the sarracenia. I raised him but Idk if he understands some plants are not to go in. He's done well so far staying out of the cobra. Sarracenia are known to eat wasps, yellow jackets and occasional house fly. Im sure not every wasp and yellow jacket are stupid enough to go in. They do help with the bad bugs that kill my plants. It's time I move up the carnivorous plant chain. I been sticking with beginner plants. Well winter growing is not beginner. It's an interesting plant.
 

SHBailey

Gray-bearded Member
So we had a fun visit with our friends on Monday, and (you were right) Puff probably spent most of the day napping in his hide – at least that was where he was when we got back right around his usual bedtime, so we just turned off the lights and let him sleep. Bath and bugs on Tuesday as usual, and he had a nice meal, including some fresh butternut squash that my husband cooked up for him, and loaded up the freezer with the rest – he’d had a whole squash in the refrigerator for a long time and luckily it was still good when he cut it open. Puff still loves butternut squash, but he’s not too crazy about the fresh dandelion greens that we’re getting from our yard nowadays. Oh well. At least he’s eating something besides crickets and roaches. :roll:

It’s been a long time, but I’m pretty sure that the Jurassic Park ride wasn’t there the last time I was at Universal, although some of the other tourist attractions in Southern California (Knott’s Berry Farm, for one) had dinosaur exhibits after the movie was such a hit. They even have dinosaur and reptile attractions at the Alaska State Fair, which I try to get to whenever I’m up to it. They’re pretty cool, but probably no comparison to what they have at the permanently located amusement parks in So Cal. Our state fair runs for a little over a week up to and including Labor Day – it has to be at the end of the summer at harvest time because part of the fun are the contests with the giant vegetables and who can grow the biggest ones with all the extra daylight we get here in the summer. Then they pack it all up and move it out until the next year, and they use the fairgrounds for all kinds of other things during the rest of the year. The Scottish Highland Games is going to be there this next Saturday, and we’re hoping to go, but they’re predicting temperatures in the high 70’s or low 80’s – a real Alaskan heat wave, so I don’t know how well that’s going to work. We’ve got one of our infamous summer forest fires going down on the Kenai Peninsula, and it’s making the air in Anchorage a little smoky and hazy. Some rain would actually be pretty nice right about now.

Your carnivorous plant garden sounds like it would be a fascinating and beautiful place. Maybe I could use a few of those in my yard to take care of the occasional yellow jackets. I got stung by one of those once and I hope not to ever repeat that experience because it really HURTS! :shock: Problem is the plants wouldn’t survive the winter unless I had someplace indoors to keep them, which I really don’t. But my husband has a few little pots in the yard and he’s trying to grow some collards and mustard greens and endive for Puff. So far, we’ve got some little bitty green things so we’ll see what happens. Hope my husband doesn’t get his feelings hurt if Puff doesn’t eat the greens. The whole thing is an experiment... :mrgreen:
 

BlueDragon09

BD.org Addict
Original Poster
Hey,

I started with venus flytrap in May 2010. It's been 9 years since and I do sell divisions when they're ready to support themselves. im getting good at it. I have made mistakes this first few times.

The winter growing ones, I have to feed them bugs from the reptile stash. I got tons for reptiles anyway. Winter is horrid here with high winds and rain. Luckily I have portable batteries for reptile lights and fish tank filters and heaters.

The summer growing types are easier. They'll eat all summer long.

I figured Puff slept the whole time. Sounds like Kane and Jamie in winter. I can't stop them from brumation.

Kane is about to be three years July 11. Since Kane is two years he's an adult so no hatchlings/juvies here. The only time he sees a vet (since Im married to one) he gets checked when something's up. Same with Jamie and Broly (then again something always up with him).

It is a beautiful garden and I go outside with my dragons in a bunny hutch. Im not allowed un sun, I have to wear a hat and loose fitting clothes. I learned to ignore the wasps and yellow jackets. They go in my pitchers so I don't worry about them. The male wasp I raised avoids the plants. You can actually pet this wasp. That's the difference between this wasp and other wasps.
 

SHBailey

Gray-bearded Member
Hi…

(06-27-2019)
So I suppose having a few carnivorous plants around the house can be helpful when it comes to extra bugs left over from the reptiles, not to mention the occasional escapees. You probably have a unique ecosystem going in your garden as well. :D

We’ve been doing pretty well with keeping our crickets and roaches contained lately, but every once in a while we’ve had a cricket get loose, take up residence under the refrigerator, and chirp for a month or so, and I have to remind myself that it’s a cricket and not the motor going out. I guess they find enough organic crud to live on under there – it’s been too long since we cleaned behind the fridge. :oops:

Once in a while I find roaches in Puff’s laundry, and my husband also once found one up his sleeve a couple of hours after he’d fed the beardie. I suppose a venus flytrap would be handy at times like that – just feed it a little snack. :mrgreen:

Yeah, we may have to get used to a brumating beardie. Puff spent last night in his hide, and my husband will have to get him out for me for his “good morning” cuddle, which he still tolerates quite sweetly. The tank is too tall for me to reach him when he goes “downstairs” to his hide, so Daddy has to get him out, and Daddy wore himself out doing yardwork for several hours in the “heat” (relatively speaking – low 70’s) yesterday afternoon, so he’s sleeping in this morning. :sleepy2: I’m afraid he may have gotten overheated – hereditary skin condition involving a lack of sweat glands, so he can overheat very easily, especially when he’s working hard, even in Alaska, although this is a much better place for him than anywhere more “tropical.” Anyway, I plan to just let both him and Puff sleep until he’s ready to get up. Later, Puff will get a bath and an opportunity to eat some bugs if he wants to, or go back to sleep if that’s what he prefers. We’re trying to just “go with the flow.” As long as Puff doesn’t start losing significant amounts of weight, we can probably chalk it up to brumation, especially since he seems ok otherwise and is not currently showing any other signs of illness, although he’s a lot like Broly in terms of being a little worry factory because “something’s always up with him.”

Happy birthday Kane. All your beardies are lucky to have a vet for a daddy, and an experienced mommy too. That way they see the vet every day and they only have to go in to the office when it’s something their own family member(s) can’t do at home. Pretty good deal. :)

I never would have thought that you could tame a wasp! :shock:

BTW, I had a dragonfly land on my forehead when we were out visiting our friends the other day. Our friend said it was really cute and wanted to take a picture. :love10: My husband had his iphone (that can take photos) with him but it flew away before he could get the phone out. Oh well.

(07-06-2019)
So I should have posted this TLDR when I had the chance, but I got sidetracked and it sat around until now. :oops: Since then our heat wave has gotten worse and you’ve probably heard about it on the national news. We have fires everywhere, even one in Anchorage, and they cancelled even the professional fireworks shows on the 4th because of the extreme fire danger.

I’ve turned some of Puff’s heat lamps off and all of them are turned down, but he still needs his UV and a little bit of heat to get the temperatures up to where he likes them for basking (what little he does these days), even though that helps it get too warm in the house for his human slaves. They’re predicting temperatures in the mid 80s for the next few days, then it’s supposed to “cool off” into the mid 70s, which is still too hot for us Alaskans. We will get snow and ice in a few months, but I wouldn’t mind some of that right about now... :banghead:
 

BlueDragon09

BD.org Addict
Original Poster
Hey,

I wouldn't mind some of that wind right now. Im warm at night! It's not even that warm outside...so Idk why it's so warm. I can use a mini air conditioner since Im getting too warm when trying to sleep. It's part of the reason why Im up so damn late. Of course then there's insomnia...what a pain!

Venus flytraps can't have anything too big or the trap will die. That's just how it copes with too big of prey. I had my fair share of too big of prey and the trap dies. A sundew is a better fit for big prey. I have six inch tall sundew who traps bugs well. Big or small she's an excellent hunter. Cobra lilies live out in California and south Oregon, so or course my four are doing well. I have two who are dividing so a total of six in a pot. I'll have to separate next spring. I don't trust it on its own. My four inch tall venus is a bit on the "everything go black" side of things..either sunburn or there's a problem I need to nip quickly. After looking very closely today at my new pitcher (who I named after someone who died 9 years ago) I saw a springtail! I read everything from they eat dead, decaying animal/plant matter to eats bacteria and fungi to eats roots of young plants. I examined the bug, all I saw it do was run around the base of the plant into soil. I mean I do see curling on my pitcher but since it's just one bug I saw there's no way he's causing that on his own. Idt there's more and I had a good experience with springtails. Last summer they were on my cobra and I never saw any harm come to the four. Tom assured me that my pitcher going through some stress. Im still waiting for new growth on my new guy. It opened a hood on a pitcher that was closed when I unboxed it. Im thinking it's doing better now and hopefully the curling stops.

I have heard the fires and also earthquakes in California. I had to make sure my friend was ok. He was good he felt it but he doesn't live in the area where it originated from. He stresses me out sometimes...

Broly's definitely a worry factory. He's ok now, gaining up to 40g last week. Of course that had to be potty weight. He went potty three times that day so 40g is gone. 572g and hopefully higher next week.
 

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I miss you so much, Amaris 💔
What is a quick way to warm up a cold beardie? His heating element went out overnight and now he's very cold.
Pearl Girl wrote on moorelori1966's profile.
i feel so sad reading your about me 😢
Clapton is acclimating okay I think. He's quick as lightning so I'm not sure how much I should bring him out of his house yet. He's not at all interested in his salad though. I wonder if I should change what I'm giving him. Least he's eating his crickets.

Things to do:
Buy calcium powder
Material to raise surface for basking spot
Scenery decals for back of tank

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