bearded dragon sitting while on vacation

[citrusfan]

Hi,

I have two adults and two baby (4 months old?) bearded dragons. In a month, I am going on a vacation for one week and this is going to be my first time away from home. I think I would like to have a sitter come home to care for them while I'm away but this is no easy task. Does anyone have any suggestions for me to make this dragon sitting as easy as possible? I'm already thinking about chopping all the veggies in advance but I don't want the sitter to have to deal with putting them in our feeding chamber for crickets, etc. Currently they eat crickets, mealworms, waxworms and veggies.

Thanks.

 

[spyder79]

bulk up on worms. I had to have my dragons babysat once and I bought up a ton of superworms in pods so that all the sitter had to do was grab them out (with tongs I got for her to use cause the worms were creepy to her lol) and feed them to my babies. Pre chopped greens is also a great idea.

 

[xenziffen]

You could almost make something like a pill-reminder to hold the meals for a week. Some kind of little cups with the worms pre-counted and ready to go in. Have the salad with dust/vitamins in Dixie cups in the fridge stacked one inside of the other (might need one lid per stack).

Instructions would be: Toss old food from dish. Take one salad cup from the stack in fridge. Dump it in the dish. Top it with worms and cricks from pre-measured cups on shelf.

I wonder if you could buy lids for Dixie cups, like fast-food lids so the straw hole already makes an escape resistant air hole.


Besides that, realize even if they are used to you feed them 3 times a day, they will still survive if they go 1-day without food. They probably wouldn't even notice.

Someone pointed out to me that for two days away it was probably okay just to shorten the timer on the bulbs, and the resulting low metabolism would make a beardie sleep through my absence. They are cold blooded, and you are the master of the light switch.

 

[Phoenix17June2009]

i typed out a schedule for my beardies when i went on vacation (gave my pet sitter a copy before i left and left one on the table "just incase" loaded up on wormies and everything was fine. because of my work schedule my babies are kept on a tight schedule so i just took what i did and put it on paper for her. my baby was in WONDERFUL shape when i came back and i would have to say even more spoiled than when i left *if thats even possible lol*

 

[citrusfan]

Hi all,

Thank you for the helpful suggestions. I liked all the input and especially the dixie cups. I will definitely try that. I think sometimes Costco sells just the lids for drink cups. Does anyone breed worms and crickets? That's another headache. Also, how do you find a good sitter who is careful about not dropping poops on the floor, etc? I have two cats and I am super careful about not dropping anything that came out of the cage.