I am new here and had a question about my beardie's growth and skin/shedding. I have a female bearded dragon. She will be four in a few weeks. She is 15in long and although she doesn't look underweight to me our gram scale broke, therefore I haven't been able to check. I am a little bit concerned as she has not shed in a long time, longer then I can say. Some of the skin on her nose looks a little bit pushed in, I don't know how else to describe it. I also feel badly as she has walked in her feces a few times and it has gotten caught in her scales on her feet, tail, and belly. I have tried giving her warm baths, but it has only helped so much. I guess my main question is do you think she is done with growth or not? If not, what can I do to help her so she can shed and grow a few more inches? She was the largest of her clutch by quite a bit, another reason why I thought she seemed small. She is living in a 40 gallon breeder. She has a 100 watt basking light on one side (along with a large basking rock) and some drift wood and a half log underneath, which she uses quite often, on the other side. At night we use a 50 watt red bulb on the side with the log and driftwood for warmth. In the middle of the two fixtures we have the fluorescent bulbs setup for UVB. It doesn't span across the entire cage like some of the light fixtures I've seen, just covers the middle portion. I will mist her every once in a while to make sure she doesn't get dehydrated. She doesn't seem to like licking the water off her nose, but every so often she will. She is fed vegetables and fruit every other day. about a 25% fruit 75% vegetable salad. Normally we feed red cabbage as she seems to really enjoy that, and romaine, kale, collard, or iceberg lettuce when we have nothing else. The fruit is normally strawberries or blueberries. I feed about 50 large crickets a week. They are usually gutloaded with scraps of vegetable from out fridge. Normally with Something she likes such as red pepper or romaine. Each time I feed insects I dust them with calcium powder with D3 and a vitamin/mineral supplement once a week. We also have a leo whom gets mealworms, so she gets about 10 - 15 of those a week, just the small ones as a treat. Every so often we will get waxworms for the both of them, no more then once a month. When we get those she is fed between 5 - 10 sprinkled on her salad or just alone in a separate dish. Lastly, I don't know if this is relevant, but she gets 2 baths a month, and has been getting more lately, as I mentioned we are trying to get the poop out of her scales.
Thanks so much! Sorry if this is like information overload, just trying to give as much info as possible to get to the root of the problem. Thanks again!
Thanks so much! Sorry if this is like information overload, just trying to give as much info as possible to get to the root of the problem. Thanks again!