Acting weird after shedding

[jmcoghla]

Hello,
Weezy is probably at least 8 months old. She was skittish when I first got her but has calmed down and now lets me take her out of the cage without much of a fight. Recently, she did a full body shed, including her head. She's now 15.5 inches long. The day after her shed, I didn't have crickets so I gave her pellets and greens to eat. Since the shed, she isn't as excited to eat her crickets and hasn't touched her greens (and she's ALWAYS eaten her greens even since a baby). Not only is she not eating her greens and is being less than excited about her crickets, she has been going into a cave I bought for her a long time ago and she never would go in there before. She was sitting in the cave and she needed to eat so I held the cricket cage up to the glass to entice her out of the cave. She came about half way out but wouldn't come out fully. I slowly tried to grab her and she puffed up her beard and body and opened her mouth at me. She has never done this before. I'm thinking that it's either one of 2 things. Either she was in her cave which maybe she considers her safe zone and felt threatened by me when I tried to grab her. So maybe it was just an automatic defense mechanism. Or, now that she shed, she feels bigger and badder and is testing her puffing abilities.

My main concerns are that since the shed, she isn't as excited to eat and won't eat her greens, and now she showed aggression for the first time. Has anyone noticed this at this stage in their beardies life? Is it possibly just something they do when they get older?

 

[zimbabwepegasus]

welll.... all right, here's some ideas. But first, how long has it been since the last shed?

1. What are you using for UVB (flourescent tube, compact/coil or MVB), please include brand & how long have you had it?

2. There is such a thing as beardie puberty. Not all beardies go through it, but some just tend to be brats...

They do slow down their eating as they get older. How much/often are you feeding? She's around the age where you can be switching her to a regulated feeding schedule rather than "as many as she'll eat within..." . If it's been over a week, I would strongly consider getting a fecal run and maybe picking up some roaches to trick her! No beardie can resist the roach.

 

[jmcoghla]

thanks for the reply! I'm using a brand new light that I got just a couple weeks ago. it's a UVA/UVB bulb. I can't remember the brand name right now, but it's one that is in all the pet stores. She actually had a fecal test done just a couple weeks ago because she had a breathing issue, and the test came back fine. The shedding just happened this weekend. She is eating crickets, but she use to go crazy and all of sudden, she's less eager. Maybe it is just some new thing that happened because of the big shed. I think I have heard that some do go through a puberty type of stage (an adolescent crabby-ness). I'm hoping the aggression was simply a reaction to me coming at her while in the cave, because as soon as I took the cave away, she calmed down.

 

[zimbabwepegasus]

The older beardies get, the less live prey they need. Adult beardies only need around 50 crickets a week. I would consider dropping her down to maybe 20 crickets a day or so and see.

My guess is that she's having an off week.

It could be a combo of things. She's getting older, going through puberty, winter's kicking in and while she's a bit young for a full brumation; many of us do feel that even our younger beardies slow down for a while during the winter and on top of that - you messed with her hide, man!

 

[jmcoghla]

Yea, she's probably just being a biotch. She is pretty high maintenance. Sometimes I think those beardie pellets also don't really make her stomach feel too good either. She actually looked pregnant and bloated! Well at least my cost of crickets will go down!

 

[zimbabwepegasus]

Double check the UVB brand.
If you just got it a couple weeks ago, you can probably still return it if needed!

Make sure it's a flourescent tube and you want either a reptisun 10.0, reptisun 5.0 or a repti-glo 8.0. You do NOT want any ESU/Zilla products or a repti-glo 10.0 (studies have shown that there may be problems with that bulb and why risk it?!)

 

[jmcoghla]

thanks, i'm at work right now so i'll check it out when i get home. I do know it's not a tube, but a bulb. The vet didn't seem to have any issue with that

 

[zimbabwepegasus]

hmmm.
check out http://www.uvguide.co.uk
It has some awesome UV studies on it