NickAVD
Gray-bearded Member
- Beardie name(s)
- Foxy
Thank you! It was interesting to read about reproduction.About 50 - 60, and can be once a year of a few times a year.
It's in between a life birth and laying eggs: The female pulls back in the ootheca and lets the eggs develop internally (I just looked: now the ootheca is pulled in almost completely, I only see approx. 0.5 cm sticking out, before it was really long, approx. 3 cm).
Once the eggs are ready for hatching, the ootheca is pushed out again from which the little ones then hatch immediately. I do not know an animal that does it similarly, only a few that lay the eggs right before hatching and sometimes in the moment they hatch (including some snakes).
If breeding works, I plan to keep a few and feed of the other very (!) young to my dragon.
(I know it's often advised to not feed hissing cockroaches to bearded dragons. This makes sense as they are very large and there is danger to suffocate for the dragon. I would never do that. The small ones however are not larger than an isopod or small dubia. I had already fed such to my dragon - as I initially got a large amount of hissers when I bought them - and it's not different from such as a dubia: soft, not aggressive, easy to be eaten.)
It is very similar to dubias, both in quantity and in the process itself.