DrRobotnik
New member
So this is my first post (sorry if it's a bit on the long side, I did read the articles on brumation), we have a healthy female beardie named Ducky (roughly 10-12 months old) who is in excellent health as of her most recent check up. Over the past month or so, she has been spending more time on the cool side of her enclosure (her husbandry is stable and excellent according to the reptile specialist vet, but I can elaborate if necessary). Up until about a month ago, she typically would spend most of the day basking and would be eagerly awaiting feedings throughout the day, chasing down her food almost before we could get it in her enclosure! Now we noticed the change in behavior when she started hanging out almost all day on the cool side, darkening in color, and was not interested in food while she was there. We started moving her over to her basking spot to warm her up and attempt feeding (her color would lighten and normalize), but she was not as interested, and we would have to put her right in front of her food (be it dubias, BSFL, crickets, or salad) and she would eat a fair amount, though still less than normal. This prompted us to bring her back to the vet, and he examined her and said she was in perfect health, and suspected that she was trying to brumate, although he said this is kind of on the young side to display this behavior he felt it was not extremely abnormal. His suggestion was that we stop feeding her completely and lower her daylight time to no more than 10 hours max, and monitor her weight for a couple weeks. He felt that if she maintained weight (or had relatively nominal losses of 1-3 grams) that it was a sign that she is in fact healthily brumating, but if she started to drastically lose weight then this would be a sign something else was wrong and he would do blood work (we gave a stool sample which he said looked healthy and will have the results tomorrow).
My concern right now is mainly in not feeding her at all for a couple weeks, as it just seems abnormal to me since she was still eating, albeit less than normal and only when we moved her to her basking spot/right in front of her food. He stated that it's not uncommon for brumating dragons to still eat when offered, but still suggested that we offer no food at all for the next two weeks and monitor weight, stay in contact and go from there.
Should I be concerned about not feeding her at all for the next week or two? Any thoughts or opinions would be greatly appreciated!!
My concern right now is mainly in not feeding her at all for a couple weeks, as it just seems abnormal to me since she was still eating, albeit less than normal and only when we moved her to her basking spot/right in front of her food. He stated that it's not uncommon for brumating dragons to still eat when offered, but still suggested that we offer no food at all for the next two weeks and monitor weight, stay in contact and go from there.
Should I be concerned about not feeding her at all for the next week or two? Any thoughts or opinions would be greatly appreciated!!