carmallarm":c9b72 said:FYI, it's recommended that Beardie females be a minimum of 18 months old before breeding. If you breed them too early, calcium which should be going towards their bones goes towards the development of eggs, which can cause an early onset of MBD.
I would recommend looking up brumation (sort of like a pre-mating hibernation), as well as vitamin and calcium +D3 vitamin supplements, especially for your female. Make sure they both have proper lighting and heat, and that they get fresh veggies, gut-loaded prey, etc. For all the time other than when you specifically put them together to mate, each Beardie should have his/her own cage (40 gallon minimum. Wide/deep tanks are better than tall ones).
When the time comes, you'll need a large dig box for your female filled with dirt (I used a soil/peat moss topsoil mix with no added fertilizers from Home Depot). Some people use various mixes of dirt, pearlite, vermiculite, sand, etc. Just make sure that it clumps nicely and is nice and warm. (It's fantastic that you already have incubators, but I'll add info about them for everyone else reading this thread, so they get a complete breakdown of costs). You'll want to pre-order an incubator, and set it up a couple of days before the eggs are due to be laid to make sure that the temperatures stop fluctuating and are set between 84 and 86 degrees F. The Hova Bator is a great incubator for beginners. It's small and cost-effective, and can easily incubate 25 Beardie eggs held in plastic sandwich containers: http://www.herpsupplies.com/product.cfm?id=1602N
Hatchling Beardies need to eat 3x/day, and should be eating ~15 crickets/day. You can order pinhead crickets online at http://www.wormman.com/pd_1000.cfm , or any other number of insect breeding websites. Make sure the babies get plenty to eat! If they aren't given enough food, they'll start to nip at eachother's toes and tails. They should also be housed at no more than 5/tank, or less than that for the beginner breeder so you can be more aware of dominance issues. Also, make sure to house hatchlings on newspaper. It's not the prettiest substrate, but crucial to keep the babies from swallowing substrate and dying from intestinal compaction. Here's a website with info on raising hatchling Beardies: http://www.dachiu.com/care/bbeard.html
As for $$, here's an approximate break-down of costs for 1 average-sized clutch (20 eggs) Btw, this doesn't include the cost of vet visits, vitamin supplements for the parents, etc. Just costs for the dig-box, eggs, and hatchlings:
Incubator: $40
Dirt/pearlite mix: $10
Dig-box: $5
Sandwich containers for eggs: $5
Boxes to house babies (5 beardies/box, $10/box): $40
Lighting for babies (1 set of lights/box (1 day light + 1 night light) + clamps for lights (10 total) + 1 long UV bulb + stand which will suffice for all boxes): $155
Crickets for hatchlings (20 hatchlings, 20 crickets/hatchling/day, $0.03/cricket, 1 month of feeding): $360
Mealworms for hatchlings (20 hatchlings, 1 mealworms/hatchling/day, $.03/mealworm, 1 month of feeding): $18
Veggies for hatchlings (1 bunch kale/week + etc. veggies): $15
TOTAL COST (20 well-fed, warm, hatchlings, raised to 1 month old): $648
If you sell each Beardie for $50/piece, you will make $1,000 from the sale, which is reduced to $352 after subtraction of costs of raising the babies. This ends up being a $35% profit. However, remember that you might not sell all of your babies in a month, and simply feeding all those hungry mouths for 2 months instead of 1 will cause you to operate at a loss. Also, your female could become egg-bound which will cost $$ at the vet's office, you may decide to adopt out some of your babies at no cost if you're sure that they'll be going to good homes. If you decide to ship your babies, shipping in temperature extremes is not recommended, so you may need to either keep the babies for a while until temperatures are more conducive to shipping live animals or pack them in cold/hot packs and plenty of insulation. All of this costs money.
In total, raising baby Beardies is an incredible and rewarding experience, but should not be done for profit unless you're a large-scale operation who is breeding for a particular phenotype, where you'd be able to charge lots more for the babies.
Good luck with your beardies, and welcome to the BD forum.
midnight_962002":3c983 said:You still in school? Have you ever breed these animals?
midnight_962002":3c983 said:...It isn't exactly financially rewarding though. Not to mention the vet bills for the breeders. I just had my male checked out. It wasn't just a simple checkout either. The vet listened to his heart and lungs, did a fecal, and drew blood for a checking of calcium and organ functionality. That bill alone was $257. My girls will be going in shortly before the season starts to make sure there bodies are capable of handling the egg laying.
I would rather my animals be safe than me being sorry that I lost them.
Ernie
ilovebeardeddragons":9aa96 said:hey carmallarm you probubly cant tell what would be good to breed with a beardie by just looking at it but you think you can tell me somthing taht would be good to breed with my baby athena when she is old enough heres a pic of her i just dont havae a clue what type would be good to breed with her im hoping you can help me thansk ahead of time...
carmallarm":9baca said:I'm just about to finish my Senior year in undergrad, and have begun the application process for grad school. Wish me luck!
I take this stuff seriously, and I didn't mean at all to come off sounding as if I didn't think you knew what you were doing. There are just so many irresponsible breeders out there that I almost thought it was too good to be true to find someone who had planned a breeding so far in advance, and who took his pets to the vet, and who even had incubators set up beforehand. I am truly impressed. 8)
Have you considered pet insurance? If you've had the animals for more than 60 days, you can sign them up for pet insurance, which for lizards, is only about $10/month, and they'll cover a whole lot of expenses. You may want to consider that, especially for your females. I'd have signed up my guys already, but I've only had them for just over 30 days.
Good luck with your breeding, and I'd love to see some pictures of your lizards!
ilovebeardeddragons":43830 said:hey carmallarm you probubly cant tell what would be good to breed with a beardie by just looking at it but you think you can tell me somthing taht would be good to breed with my baby athena when she is old enough heres a pic of her i just dont havae a clue what type would be good to breed with her im hoping you can help me thansk ahead of time Jessica & Nyroc & Athena
midnight_962002":c4f54 said:I haven't really looked into pet insurance. I was going to recently. But, just haven't had time. Do you have a link? Ernie
ilovebeardeddragons":a9fff said:i got a two years to learn and plan (athena is only 5 1/2 months old)
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