be prepared new beardie owners.

[pyrovamp]

when i got bowen three years back i did two years of research and im glad i did. when i got him i spent 206 on his first home and him.i would think that when people get any animal they would know to look at what excatly they are getting. i work as a bather in the salon of petco and its shocking how much people dont even know about dogs before they get the. i "saved" him from petco he was the biggest in the closer at at least 6-8 inches in length. food wise i get off easy my family has a aquaponic set up so is nummies besides the turnip greens are grown here at my house. but on average i pay $2 for a thing of turnip greens and for bugs i get off easy as well cause i live about five minutes from Armstrong Cricket Farm here in Glennville Ga so for about a month and a half or so i get about 500 or or for only $6 bucks. i say or so cause i have no clue i just get a medium sized blue bucket full to the brim with supers. which he eats about 20 of them.

 

[JenFid]

IMO once you've invested the $ they are pretty low maintenance, especially adults. Besides checking their basking temps and throwing food at them in the morning they can pretty much chill for the rest of the day. Come home from work, check for poos, maybe give them a bath, then cuddle the rest of the day with them
Greens are cheap, as is the squash I use as their main veggie. Roaches get the leftover greens and squash and pretty much take care of themselves.

 

[thatLizardGuy]

IMO once you've invested the $ they are pretty low maintenance, especially adults. Besides checking their basking temps and throwing food at them in the morning they can pretty much chill for the rest of the day. Come home from work, check for poos, maybe give them a bath, then cuddle the rest of the day with them
Greens are cheap, as is the squash I use as their main veggie. Roaches get the leftover greens and squash and pretty much take care of themselves.

Very True.

They only eat a Fraction of what they eat as Adults compared to when they are younger.

So just Food, Calcium, and UVB every 6 Months is pretty cheap in my opinion.

 

[igotit]

my beardies are starting to eat less...but the initial investment was high,demand was high.as they get older the degree of attention required slacks off a bit.

 

[SarahKissinger]

I agree. It is a lot of work. And right now we have the problem that Sunburst won't eat any greens, no matter what I put in there. She likes her crickets and caliworms (once they've turned into flies). It's almost like she doesn't want it unless it moves! I just got my ubv light. I know with tank and everything (not counting food so far) I've spent roughly $300. Which isn't bad. But more then I expected. I just went straight with the 40 gallon tank instead of wasting my time with more smaller ones. My little girl is small. I'm not sure of her size, I'll have to measure her.

My worry isn't the money. I'm hoping she gets less stressed soon. Whenever I approach the cage, she gets the black stress marks on her belly and her beard. It's getting better. She also tends to run when I try to get her too. And it takes her a little bit to calm down too. But then when I try to put her back in the cage, she doesn't want to leave my hand haha. I've only had her for 2 weeks this weekend.

Oh and I buy $.16 a cricket and she eats between 50-100 a day since she won't touch greens. She's only "a couple months old" (that's all petsmart could tell me for age) Any tips for greens?

 

[igotit]

I would add in worms with my veggies ,at first my little one wouldn't eat them.
I started off with wild yard clovers,thats the only green he wanted.
now they prefer the greens over crickets.
I give them broccoli,mustard greens,kale lettece and squash all chopped up.

 

[jarich]

I think Id agree with Jen that they are pretty easy to care for, though its a perspective issue of course. In comparison to other lizards, they are very simple and relatively cheap. They eat a good deal of veggies when adults (cheaper), have no special humidity requirements (unlike almost all other reptiles), heating is simple, and they have a pretty slow metabolism for a lizard. They are easy to handle without any training, and can carry a fairly high parasite load without it being problematic. Id say overall a very good hearty reptile for someones first animal, though I agree that reptiles are not a pet that should be prevalent anyway.

 

[timisimaginary]

i think the biggest problem with beardies is the amount of ignorance and misinformation out there about them, especially coming from the pet stores. the hardest part of owning a beardie is sorting out the good info from the bad. i recently picked up some of those care pamphlets that petsmart puts out for different kinds of reptiles and the one for bearded dragons included the following recommendations, all of which we know are wrong and/or harmful for them:

- recommended calcium sand as a substrate
- recommended housing a pair of adult male dragons together
- showed a picture of a recommended habitat that used a CFL UVB bulb instead of a tube bulb
- recommended mealworms as a feeder insect

it's hard to blame petsmart employees for not knowing how to properly care for bearded dragons when the company's own caresheets are so woefully wrong about them. and the number of products marketed towards bearded dragons that are useless and/or harmful to them also makes it harder. sadly, the majority of these lizards will be sold to people who trust the info the pet store gives them and will end up sick or dying because of it. unless people seek the information out for themselves on sites like this, the ignorance gets passed on.

 

[igotit]

I agree about pet store lacking/suppling the wrong info.
everytime I go into petco....I see the same lil dragons 3 inches long.they look to be suffering to me....but they appear to be healthy.
they are too small to be sold in my opinion,the heat is all wrong,they get crickets larger than their head,deep water dish....ect.