HELP: Rescues Laying Eggs and another playing dead?

[rkdkp]

Hi! I have rescued 8 Beardies this last week, 2 of which are ready to lay eggs. We haven't had this experience yet and haven't even done the research on it, as our pet dragons are all too young to breed.

Here are the questions I have:

1 - They have a slight head vibration... Every once in a while, her head will vibrate. Nothing like a seizure or anything, but just like a vibration. It lasts for about 15 seconds and then she stops for a little bit. Not sure what this is... The person that we rescued her from said she had laid 3 eggs yesterday and when we looked, the eggs were all crushed. I don't know if being in labor has anything to do with it or not, just concerned about it.

2 - The other one is also very moody today. Doesn 't want to be touched and seems cranky even when just putting our hand in the cage to pet her. Does that mean that she should lay soon?

3 - We gave the boy a bath a couple days ago and then dried him off, put him back under his heat light. He threw up and then it looked like he died. He stopped breathing and when we picked him up, he was limp. He wasn't breathing and my husband could just touch his eyeball. We turned him on his back and he just laid there. I started massaging/pumping his chest and rubbing him to stimulate him while I was on the phone with our experts at the rep store. He said that we shouldn't count any reptile as being dead, sometimes they play dead, and just then, FatHead started breathing again and has been fine since. We are now scared to give him another bath... Have you heard of this before? Are we ok to give him another bath?

4 - We are taking all of the eggs to our local reptile store for them to incubate and hatch, but I want to make sure I don't do any harm to them before-hand. How and what should we do with them if they lay before we can get them to the reptile store? One of the people that we rescued these guys from gave us a tub of what looks like mulch and soil mixed together. We thought we would just put the eggs in there until we can get them to the store. Is that ok? Do we need to do anything special?

Thanks for your help!

Kim

 

[Drache613]

Hello Kim,

Wow rescuing 8 dragons is quite a feat. How many females do you have?
So you are going to take in all of the eggs to the reptile shop or are you going to attempt to incubate them at home?
How old are the females ready to lay? If the eggs were crushed she may have laid on them or something to have damaged them.
I would keep a close eye on the grouchy one in case she has any trouble. She might be getting ready to lay pretty soon yes, if she is that erratic.
Well, if you are going to try & keep the eggs separate, then you need to make separate lay boxes & label the lay boxes as to which female laid. Just so you know what to tell them, for genetics, etc. Also, in case there are any health problems you know where they came from.
If they do lay in the laybox provided for them before you get them to the reptile shop, just leave them untouched unless it is going to be quite awhile. The eggs will be ok in the dirt temporarily.
About the male. He obviously did not like the bath. He got worked up & upset & maybe inhaled some water perhaps? I have experienced this type of tantrem before as not all dragons like baths. Something to remember though, do not turn a dragon on his back. They do not have a diaphram to help support breathing & they can collapse a lung & suffocate easily if placed on their backs.
Did he turn his beard black as well?

Now, for the head vibration, that is worrisome. Someone did not properly care for any of them if they all have head vibrations. That is most likely moderate to advanced metabolic bone disease. That concerns me especially for the females getting ready to lay as that will pull more calcium & nutrients from them.
I highly suggest getting liquid calcium for ALL of them right now, especially the females. The best out there is from Veronica's site at: http://www.beautifuldragons.com Click on the supplement link.
I would keep them on that for at least a month, then you can switch to powder. The Repcal calcium powder with or without D3 is the best.
What type & brand of UVB light do you have? Is it a flourescent tube bulb or a compact or coil light?
How do you have them housed?

Tracie

 

[scalesandtales]

it sounds like mbd you should definatly order the liquid calcium, I have my guys on it too. The bottles are kind of small so you will need a few bottles.

 

[rkdkp]

We actually gave the dragons to someone else who knows more about them. We are thinking that they are going to have to put down the one female as she isn't doing well and does not seem to support her own weight. The other is pulling out of it and seems to be doing well.

We are slowly getting away from having so many males and mostly females. I think we are down to 4 males and 7 females. Each of the males is a different age bracket. One is about 2 months, one is about 4 months, one is about 9 months and the last guy is about 2 or 3 years old.

We have 10 eggs that we think are going to be good. 9 were laid on 1/1/09 and the other was laid on 1/2/09. We are home incubating them at home! We are excited for the new challenge.

I think we now have all healthy dragons and I think we are going to keep them all. My kids have volunteered to work at our local reptile store for crickets! Better than that, they are getting to learn about a whole different group of animals than most of their friends at school.

 

[Tatty]

I have been putting together an egg laying and incubation thread on breeding discussion forum that you might want to check called the Popcorn Tatty and Their Eggs Thread which is becoming detailed. God Bless you for what you have done. Best of luck.

Tatty

 

[lemmons]

now really concerned about chapper's head vibration - i've only ever seen her do it once or maybe twice. are there any other features of mbd i can look out for? she's laid two clutches of eggs, both of which appeared fine and are incubating nicely. she gets calcium supplementation on crickets daily and veg 5-6 days per week (although to be fair the first thing they usually do is walk through the veg and spread it all over the place so not sure how much they get from that!) but i do always put the supplemented crickets on their food bowl so any excess will go into whatever veg is remaining at cricket time. she's got a reptisun glo 10 light which was replaced in september.

 

[damien6210]

hi just putting my two cents maybe u should start ur own colonies of feeders this will save u an enormous amount of money seeing that u have a really big family and some on the way i would suggest roaches they have more meat to shell ratio and will breed realy good for u and u will have a wide range in size to be able to feed ur BDies i will post some info on some roaches and pple who sell them
[quote Definitely figure out what species of roach you want as a feeder first of all. Some people like Jason (aka TheRoachGuy) only deal in a certain species. Lobsters, Turks and Dubia are the most common species used as feeders.

Lobsters: These guys put rabbits to shame and then some. They breed faster than you know. The big downside to them is they can climb glass and plastic. Use of vaseline or a "bug barrier" product will keep them from escaping. The downside is that you need to apply this to every container the roaches may be in. Aside from that, they are great nutritious feeders. This species is a live-birth species. A very cheap species that can be ordered for prices similar to crickets. http://aaronpauling.com

Turks: These guys put rabbits to shame, but not like Lobsters. They are probably the second fastest breeder for any feeder species of roach currently in the hobby. They cannot climb glass or smooth plastic (textured plastics they can climb). The fact that they do not climb is a big plus in my book. These guys are also lightning fast speed wise. Very very fast little bugs and can be hard to catch them, and some lazy reptiles won't chase them. This species is an egg laying species. Another cheap species priced similarly to crickets. http://aaronpauling.com or http://thebugpros.com

Dubia: These guys are a mediocre breeder compared to the above two species. Establishing a colony takes a bit more time and patience, but once established will meet most persons needs without a problem. They look more like roly pollies than roaches. They cannot climb glass or smooth plastic (certain textured plastics the younger ones can climb). The young have a tendency to "play dead" when they feel threatened as a defense mechanism. This is a problem with my tarantulas, since they don't know the roach is there. Not a problem with visual hunters like beardies. Their movement speed is quite slow as well. They are the turtles of the roach world. They are quite pricey upfront so can't be ordered regularly as a drop in replacement for crickets, but if you breed them, they ultimately save you money just as breeding the above two species would. They are a live birth species. I would also like to note that this seems to be the most popular roach feeder discussed on these boards currently. http://theroachguy.com

Of the three vendors mentioned above, I have ordered from thebugpros.com and theroachguy.com. My experience with thebugpros wasn't the best, but other members on this forum have mentioned in other threads that they had a perfect experience. I got the bad luck of the draw in that case I assume (they shipped on time and delivered the right quantity, I just had a bunch of die-offs for some reason) TheRoachGuy.com (Jason) I have bought from and he is very good. He participates and answers questions in this forum, and will make that extra effort to answer any other questions in email or pms as well. Can't go wrong with him. Aaronpauling.com I have never dealt with, but I have never read a bad thing about them. Always 100% positive, so I can say if I needed lobsters I would order from him.[/quote]

 

[rkdkp]

Thank you for your information. If I ever need to start paying for my feeders, I will let you know. Currently, my kids volunteer at the local reptile shop and they get paid "feeders" for their work. They love the learning experience and we don't have to pay to feed our BD's!