Welcome to the forum, and congrats on your first Beardie!!! Is he a young baby? If you have any questions at this beginning point about your husbandry, now is the time to ask, especially checking to make sure your lighting, specifically your
UVB light, is adequate for a Beardie (Hopefully you are using a long UVB tube), and that it's mounted within the correct distance from his basking spot, that you have both his basking light (hopefully you are using just a simple, bright white basking bulb) and his UVB tube right alongside each other and both over his Hot Side and directly over his main Basking spot/platform so that he gets both at the same time while he's basking, that his 3 temperature zones are within the correct ranges (Hopefully you are using either a Digital Probe Thermometer or an Infrared Temp Gun so you can measure his Basking Spot Surface Temp), and that you have him on a proper diet for a baby or juvenile Beardie which is made up of tons of healthy, live feeder insects every day, and that his supplementation schedule for Calcium and a Reptile Multivitamin is proper. This is the exact time to work all of your husbandry out, as Beardies do 90% of their growing and developing from hatching until they are one year old, so this is the time that he needs 13-14 hours every single day of adequate
UVB light, correct temperature zones, and a proper diet consisting mostly of tons of live insects. So please, ask any questions you may have about his enclosure, lighting, temperatures, diet, supplements, etc. now to get it all correct.
It's a very good idea to not only take your dragon for at least a yearly "Well-Beardie Checkup", but that you find either an experienced Certified Reptile Vet, or at the very least a very experienced Reptile Specialist Vet with a lot of Bearded Dragon experience, and that you develop a relationship with them. Unfortunately most all vets that call themselves "Exotics" Vets know nothing about Bearded Dragons or even reptiles in general, all the "Exotics" label indicates is that they are General Veterinarians who are simply willing to see animals other than dogs and cats. That's it. They don't necessarily have much experience or education in reptiles, amphibians, birds, rodents and small animals, etc. at all, and they tend to do more harm than good (recently we've seen just a ton of issues made worse by vets who are medicating dragons without running any diagnostic tests at all, guessing about what might be wrong with them, recommending UVB lights, loose substrates, and just husbandry in general that is horrible for dragons, etc. So once you find an experienced, knowledgeable Bearded Dragon Veterinarian, hang on to them!!!!
Bearded Dragons do not need any vaccinations or anything like that, and they do not need to be "wormed" every so often at all. In fact, the less medication that you give them throughout their lives the better, and please keep in mind that most "Exotics" Vets and just vets that are not familiar with bearded dragons in general will always want to treat them for "Parasites", even without doing a fecal test to determine whether or not they even have an issue. Something to keep in mind is that most Bearded Dragons have a low count/load of both Coccidia and Pinworms/Pinworm Eggs throughout their Gastrointestinal Tracts at any given time, and this is both completely normal and not a problem at all. If you did a fecal test on a perfectly healthy dragon that was eating normally, of a normal weight, that was active, etc., that fecal test would most likely come back Positive for a low count/load of Coccidia, Pinworms, or both. They do not need to be medicated at all for these two very common "parasites" unless the count/load tests as being moderate to high, or "Too Numerous To Count", and if a vet ever does a fecal test and then tells you that your dragon (who you just brought in to have a General Wellness Checkup done on and is not acting at all sick) has tested Positive for a low count of a parasite and they want to medicate them, JUST SAY NO!!! Just an FYI to a new Beardie owner because we're seeing this more and more, every single day, and it's quite literally killed a few dragons needlessly.
I just sent an email to my Certified Reptile Vet of 15 years (he's also a personal friend of mine) asking him to recommend a qualified Beardie Vet in the St. Louis area for you, so when he emails me back I'll post what he has told me. He does this all the time for me, he can look up Board Certified Vets, and he often knows of someone anyway from continuing education classes, conventions, etc. So I'll let you know what he says.
Congrats again, and please feel free to ask any questions at all that you might have about your beardie or his enclosure!
