Help! My young beardie wants to breed with the female one!

[IvanEnev]

Hello, I am new to this forum and I am worried about the 8-10 months old female beardie because she is being chased my the male one(he is the same age as her) who apparently wants to breed with her.
It is so stressfull watching how they are like fighting but they don't bite each other. The female dragon puffs her beard and doesn't allow him near her after he is trying to bite her by the neck while chasing her.
They are grown together and haven't been seperated. They are living in a small tank for their sizes but i am making a bigger one at the moment which is going to be huge.
I and not 100% sure that they are really trying to mate because I watched some videos of bearded dragons mating and the male is kind of doing the same things.

Please give me some advice, What should I do?

Thank you.

 

[VenusAndSaturn]

Separate them, they shouldn't be together in the first place. Beardies are very solitary and territorial meaning they do not like to be together and only come together to fight or mate.

Most likely if you keep them together your going to end up with a stressed out pair of beardies, and one or two dead beardies along with potentionally tons of eggs.
By the way a single female, from one single mating can lay up to 6 clutches, and sometimes more. Each clutch can have about 15-30+ eggs.
Egg laying is very stressful on a females body and if mated too young it can be fatal.

Beardies loose a lot during egg laying, my female laid about 27 eggs and lost about 100 grams, which is quite a lot. I had to basically give her calcium twice a day, everyday because of how much calcium eggs take away from a females body, in some cases if a female does not have enough calcium, the eggs will take from the females bones.

Also if you think you can handle tons of babies just to let you know that you most likely will end up spending $100+ every month or every 3 weeks on food to feed them.
And thats just on food, your going to have to buy them a separate enclosure from the parents, you need to have enclosures ready for ones that don't do too well, you need to have money saved for vet bills which most of the time costs 60 dollars just for the visit (for both the babies and the parents), you need to have correct lighting (this can cost up to 100 dollars for correct lighting).

So please, get another enclosure as soon as possible before you end up either broke or have to bury either both or one of the two.

 

[kingofnobbys]

Hello, I am new to this forum and I am worried about the 8-10 months old female beardie because she is being chased my the male one(he is the same age as her) who apparently wants to breed with her.
It is so stressfull watching how they are like fighting but they don't bite each other. The female dragon puffs her beard and doesn't allow him near her after he is trying to bite her by the neck while chasing her.
They are grown together and haven't been seperated. They are living in a small tank for their sizes but i am making a bigger one at the moment which is going to be huge.
I and not 100% sure that they are really trying to mate because I watched some videos of bearded dragons mating and the male is kind of doing the same things.

Please give me some advice, What should I do?

Thank you.

They must be separated IMMEDIATELY and not allowed to be physically together for her welfare. She's way too young to be allowed to breed.

You are in for a torrid few months if he's already mega-horny and interested in her.

The cheapest option is stacked 150L tubs set up like this : viewtopic.php?f=34&t=233480

 

[IvanEnev]

Can I somehow keep them together and only separate them for the mating season? Can they live together in a big enclosure without fighting each other? I really don't want eggs or anythig happening to them and it is going to cost a lot of money to make 2 terrariums.

 

[VenusAndSaturn]

Theres no way you can keep them together, it's more expensive and risky to keep them together than to separate them. Not even an 8 foot long enclosure would be suitable for these highly territorial lizards.

Even when it's not mating season beardies will still breed most of the time, just during this time of year they're even more sexual.

By the way each beardie needs a 75 gallon at the very least, thats about 97 dollars each, and then about 100 dollars each for the correct lighting which you should already have but if you don't just know you must have a Reptisun T5 HO 10.0 UVB tube light with a reflective fixture for UVB. Arcadia T5 HO 12% and 14% bulbs work too.

However that small amount of money you spend on getting things setup correctly will save your females life. She will die if you do not separate her. Of course you also save thousands of dollars in vet bills.

If you are in the US and theres a petco nearby they generally have one dollar per gallon sales and thats where you can get the tanks... However anything will work for now to separate them.

 

[kingofnobbys]

Can I somehow keep them together and only separate them for the mating season? Can they live together in a big enclosure without fighting each other? I really don't want eggs or anythig happening to them and it is going to cost a lot of money to make 2 terrariums.

No.

Sorry , they can not be housed together at all.

Very few keepers are able to keep two or more bearded dragons in the same enclosure successfully , those who do are very careful on the choice of dragons ( and it's only ever possible with two or more related female siblings in a very large outdoor pit style enclosure that's room size ( several metres long on each side , with multiple basking spots , hides and feeding stations ).

Breeders house all their dragons separately and only bring them together briefly in season to allow their breeding pairs to mate and immediately reseparate the dragons once the deed is done.

Only subspecies of bearded dragons who can safely be kept in small groups in the same enclosure are Rankins and usually this only works for groups of females (who are related , siblings).

Bearded dragons are happiest when living alone , housing two dragons together will ALWAYS end badly (they are perfectly capable of killing each other and the territorial disputes escalate very fast and become vicious and it's common for arms , legs and tails to be torn off in attacks).

Two large totes like I showed in my link is a very good and cheap solution. You will need two full size stacked vivs (4ft L x 2ft W x 2ft T each) for when they both reach adulthood . There is no way around this. Lots of keepers build their own from MDF or plywood.

 

[IvanEnev]

I will keep them away from each other from now on. I put a cardboard in the center of the tank to keep the male away until I finish the new terrariums.

Thanks for helping me with my situation!