Morning! First time beardie owner. Upon her purchase on 1/8/18, 1 employee said she was ~a year old, & the store owner said maybe 7 months... She was fed every other day, once daily, with greens one day and crickets the other.
I weighed/measured her upon reading your & beautiful dragon website. She was 13 1/16" long and weighed 85 grams. Would a closer guesstimate of her age be ~5-6 months?? I just want to know as I'm concerned about her nutrition & want to feed her appropriately.
Thanks so much!
It's always hard to tell a young bearded dragon's age based on size, because they all grow at slightly different rates. :roll: But I'd say around 6 months is a good guess. Either way, bearded dragons between 4-12 months need insects 4x/week, with salads offered on the other 3 days.
Definitely a lot younger, either that or very stunted growth and underfed if shes 13 inches at 7-12 months and only 85 grams.
5-6 is most likely closer to her age.
You'll want to feed her every day, twice a day. 10-20 bugs each feeding.
It probably varies depending on the persons opinion but for me I consider
1-4 months to be a baby, 4-12 months juvenile, 12-20 months sub adult, and then 20+ months adult.
Something is not right here, 85 grams? Are you sure? Can you post a photo of her?
Either way, they did her no favors with her diet. From hatching until at least a year old, they don't really need greens or veggies (you should offer them daily, but most won't eat much), but rather at least 3 live insect feeding sessions EVERY DAY, each lasting 10-15 minutes, where they are allowed to eat as many live insects as they want to.
Dragons do 85-90% of their growing and developing during their first year of life, and as such they need tons and tons of live insect protein EVERY SINGLE DAY!!!! Most dragons from hatching to a year old eat between 40-60 appropriately sized live insects every single day, so your dragon is definitely stunted in growth...but 85 grams? I mean, a length of 13.5", regardless of the actual age, should correspond with a weight of at least 200 grams+...so she must be quite thin?
A length of 13.5" is usually indicative of a dragon around 4-5 months old (most are between 5-6" when they hatch), maybe 6 months if he's on the smaller side...but 85 grams is very, very light. I'd post a photo of him, just so we can see his overall appearance and condition of health. He most likely is suffering from nutritional deficiencies, possibly MBD.