Lazy male!

[Markus]

My male beardie is around 1yr and 3months+ now and all he seems to do latley is hide in his cool spot, his cage is almost 4ft long 1.5ftdeep and 2ft high he has a powersun bulb that does Heat and UV on a thermostat, around 95-105F on the basking spot and drops to around 75 in the coolest part(under the basking shelf) the problem is he is always under the basking shelf, i put him at the basking spot and he will stay there for 10mins and slowly creep back under again, i find my self moving him 5 or 6 times aday just cause im scared he will freeze to death, he is always cold when i touch him and never his usual bright colour, but his beard isnt dark. He hardly ever wants to eat, i offer him crix and locust daily and always offer him fresh veg, every other day he will eat a cricket or 2 and pick at his veg. I understand he is ment to be getting more veg than crix but he has never been big on veg and dont know how to get him to eat more, i always offer a good veriaty but he never takes it. He hardly ever moves about, when i feed him crix he wont run for them, he will wait for them to be right infront of him and slowly stick his tounge out to get them then slowly chew them. i give him a bath about once a week and he moves around a bit in the water, no where near as much as he used to when he was younger. A few months back i got a female she is around 10-11months now, i origonaly got her for him to breed with in the future, but if there is somthing wrong with him i don't want it to stress him or do anything to make the situation worse. I've had them both out together and he dosnt seem very intrested in her, he walks away and she runs after him and stand on his back. The other day he was trying to digg in the cool area under his basking shelf, but i have tiles for substrate, the way he is acting i read somthing about females having unfertile eggs and it described him well... Is there a chance he could be a she and the younger she i bought could actuli be a He that has made him(who could be a girl) think shes pregnant and want to lay unfertile eggs? He hasnt got any bigger than usualy so i don't think he has eggs :/ :roll: seems confusing lol.

If anyone has any ideas what could be wrong please let me know. Thanks.

 

[FATBOYDADRAGON]

Hello Markus
Sounds to me like you have a beardie ready to go in to brumation.
Have a fecal done to make sure he has no parisites.
At 14 months Fatboy went in to brumation and it totally freaked me out.
He was doing the same thing your dragon is doing.
After i had fecal done and everything was ok i just let him sleep.
About every 2 weeks i would wake him feed him a couple superworms
bathe him to keep him hydrated and put him on his basking rock.
He would stay up there for an hour or so and back to his cave he would go.
He went in to brumation in November and didn't wake up until march.
When he finally decided to wake up in March in about 1 week he was back to
his normal bad self.
The first time they do this is panic what's wrong with him but after a couple of
time you get use to it and don't panic as much,
Carefully raise his tail at about a 90 degree angle and look at the vent area.
if you see 2 lumps you got a male if you see 1 lump or no lump at all you
probably got you a little girl.
Hope this helps
Mike D.

 

[Markus]

Okay, well im in the middle of creating him a big hide, i was going to fill it with somthing for him to digg in if thats what he wanted, what substrate should i fill it with? i don't mind if its messy as long as its good for him. Ill have to look up some information on brumation today, make sure i get it right for him.

 

[Gail]

You can give him a old bath towel to dig into or just cover him up with one. The digging is instinct tell him to dig and hide for brumation, you don't need to provide a big messy box to make him feel secure. I alway cover my dragons up with a small hand towel when they go into brumation and it seems to help.

http://www.beardeddragon.org/articles/brumation/