Introducing Spike to his new friend

[SpikeMilligan]

Hi,

I have has Spike my year old male beardie for about 8 months, and wanted to get him a play mate.
I went to the reptile shop with Spike to introduce him to his new 'play mate' now called Milligan.
At the reptile shop they both showed no signs of aggression and Spike did his head bobbing etc.

How they are at home, Milligan is not interested and Spike wont leave her alone with his head bobbing and biting the back of the neck ( I have been told that this is a form of love not aggression), all she wants to do is come out and when she is in the tank she hides.

She has only been at home for less then a week, is there anything else I can do to stop this!!!

 

[Spikey07]

Head bopping is a sign of dominance/aggression.

Also the biting of the back of the neck sounds very much like he is trying to mate with her.

Are they housed together all the time?

 

[SpikeMilligan]

Yes they are housed together but spend most of the time running around my living room!

 

[Gail]

They need to be separated. I'll just link you here to explain why. viewtopic.php?f=6&t=154908

 

[Sierra1167]

Please separate ASAP. Your new dragon is already stressed on top of the normal stress of being in a new home. If you keep them together, it will not end well. Bearded dragons are solitary creatures. They do not want or need a companion. They only want to come together to mate or fight. If your female is too young to be bred, getting pregnant could kill her. If you do some more reading, you will learn that most stores will tell you anything to get you to buy or the sales people are not educated in the proper care of reptiles.

 

[RandyMarsh]

sounds like she's getting super stressed out living with him. This is going to start effecting her badly if you can't move her.

 

[jabronie]

/sigh

 

[Gymgirlx]

Even with animals that ARE housed together there should be a period of time ( quarantine) to make sure the new animal will not get the other one sick!! NEVER house a male and female beardie together. Biting the neck is a sign of mating not "love" :?.

 

[jjh1]

I dont understand why you would house a male and a female together like this????

The biting of the neck is to show dominance also its a mating ritual, I hope you are set up for babies only take a flash for a male to mount a female.

They need to be separated ASAP and I would suggest that you keep an eye on them especially if she is that stressed out this could also cause dead beardie , sorry to be harsh but thats the honest truth!

 

[BeardedDragon6]

Oh my.

You know.

When a another beardie enters the alphas (owners) territory. it gets chased off.

and when it wont leave its fighting till one of them wont die.

The males will fight for domination, territory, females,


So if you want to have baby lizards, let them mate. but AFTER that seperate them, the male will continue mating with her, causing the female to get more stressed and probably even death.

Lizards are loners. They dont need any playmate, or a friend,

They would kill their own Family if needed.

.. I got an example.

How would you feel When you would be in your house, and a huge arm would put a COMPLETELY unknown human into your house, and you would have to live with it no matter how much aggresive he is.

The dominant one will fight for basking places food and other stuff so the other one will hardly get anything and will probably die.

Give Spike a plushie instead. (my babies name is Spike also. lool)

 

[Cath1068]

:dontknow: Thats all I can say. You need to listen to what the members are telling you. He doesnt need nor want a playmate and if they bred how are you gonna support that many babies that need to eat 3x a day ? Not a smart move at all.

 

[SuzukiRider]

As a new member and new to beardies myself, there is no need to be so rude to the OP. You are all experienced owners so you may think so just remember you were new and inexperienced yourself at one time. We are human and make mistakes so please be a bit more understanding and less ignorant to us human newbies. There is no need for the head banging and angry faces, that's just shows us how unapproachable you are if we have questions and problems.

 

[BeardedDragon6]

but i wasnt rude. ;_;

 

[SuzukiRider]

but i wasnt rude. ;_;

Sorry BeardedDragon, you were one of the few that wasn't rude.

 

[jabronie]

no one is rude, just expressing frustration through smilies. when there are 5 threads on the first page of this section with the same scenario of people wanting to house dragons together, and people have to literally, every day, tell someone who hasn't done any research on their own not to do so, all they can do is bang their head against a brick wall as to not lash out in frustration/anger. especially since most of the time, someone wants to argue that its ok because they have or know someone who successfully broke the 1 in 10,000 odds of housing multiple dragons together without problems, as opposed to the 9,999/10,000 times housing together ends in BAD results.