Taco Portrait

[ChileanTaco]

Two portraits of Taco, showing a nice orange beard and citrus color between the scales on his head. There is also a spike that is yellow with a small orange dot looking like from a fine-tip marker It's towards the left on the second photo.
(Not sure if it's visible on your device; photo looked realistic on our tablet, not so much on another device.)

 

[xp29]

He is a very handsome lil dude

 

[ChileanTaco]

Handsome little dude (I loooove these spikes! this neck shield*) now starts puberty
No blackbearding yet, no head bobbing, but active, active, active - and then he gets tired and goes in his cave already at 4pm (his bedtime so far was more around 8pm just shortly before the lights go out, usually when the first light is out). Yesterday and today he was about half an hour running around in our apartment, checking things out (supervised of course). We were eating some fruit which he tried, and not only sniffing with his tongue around it without touching it.

I hope that with all the running and climbing, his claws get worn down a bit Claws aren't overly long, but they are sharp and I sometimes get scratches from his claws that look like cuts from a knife (my husband has turned to using leather gloves), but I don't want to cut or file them down without it really being necessary.

*I'm wondering: does this "neck shield" even have a scientific name? I was searching around online but I don't know.

 

[NickAVD]

I really liked the first photo of Taco. Great angle, he looks like a real dragon from ancient legends.

 

[xp29]

Handsome little dude (I loooove these spikes! this neck shield*) now starts puberty
No blackbearding yet, no head bobbing, but active, active, active - and then he gets tired and goes in his cave already at 4pm (his bedtime so far was more around 8pm just shortly before the lights go out, usually when the first light is out). Yesterday and today he was about half an hour running around in our apartment, checking things out (supervised of course). We were eating some fruit which he tried, and not only sniffing with his tongue around it without touching it.

I hope that with all the running and climbing, his claws get worn down a bit Claws aren't overly long, but they are sharp and I sometimes get scratches from his claws that look like cuts from a knife (my husband has turned to using leather gloves), but I don't want to cut or file them down without it really being necessary.

*I'm wondering: does this "neck shield" even have a scientific name? I was searching around online but I don't know.

Give him a piece of flat stone in his habitat and he should dull his nails on his own. I've been doing that for years, it works decently well.

 

[ChileanTaco]

@NickAVD
I also look at him at that angle as I loooove this "head shield". That's a special feature not many reptile species have. For that reason I was also wondering whether the feature I call a "head shield" has a scientific name.

@xp29

Give him a piece of flat stone in his habitat and he should dull his nails on his own. I've been doing that for years, it works decently well.

Generally a good advice (I've seen so many enclosures where there was just nothing like a stone and I literally just saw some paper tissues, a food bowl and one plastic basking thing - bad and sad), but I think we already have that covered: He has plenty due to the naturalistic setup I had chosen for his enclosure. There are many large stones in there, also some around his food bowls and his golliwog so he must walk over the stones to access food, and the "fake stone" background is rough like sandpaper, too, and he has and uses a concrete thing to climb in addition to that. And he climbs a lot!
No issues with too long nails or femoral pore problems for that reason. He also rubs off his shedding well on the stones. His nails are just sharp, not long.

 

[NickAVD]

I also look at him at that angle as I loooove this "head shield". That's a special feature not many reptile species have. For that reason I was also wondering whether the feature I call a "head shield" has a scientific name.

I only remember the family of dinosaurs ceraptosids. They are characterized by the presence of spikes on the frill.
This word comes from two ancient Greek words keras - horn and ωψ, ops - face

 

[ChileanTaco]

So over all, with his increased activity and thus him running more over those surfaces inside his enclosure (my husband "now one can really hear we have a pet" - indeed, now a usual noise during the day is claws running over something ) and when out of his enclosure now running on the floor (apartment has a rough tile floor), instead of just staying on my shoulder or on a branch on a table, he's filing down his nails more

So far, he was usually like:
- in the enclosure: his daily routine, "active" in the way "basks, eats, poos, explores" but never "sportive"
- outside of the enclosure: sitting where I put him, avoids the floor

Now:
- in the enclosure: his daily routine, plus sitting there for 5 minutes, over there another 5 minutes, back to other basking spot... almost all the time we hear him running and jumping
- outside of the enclosure: wants to be put on the floor, runs around, runs back to me, climbs up, first afraid of a room, next day he is in...

 

[ChileanTaco]

I only remember the family of dinosaurs ceraptosids. They are characterized by the presence of spikes on the frill.
This word comes from two ancient Greek words keras - horn and ωψ, ops - face

Yes You could imagine to what I compare him always He's my little triceratops

 

[xp29]

If you decide to trim his nails, look closely and you'll see a really small tip just in front of the main nail. That is all that needs to be trimmed. It's usually very hooked and claw like, and much smaller than the rest of the nail

 

[ChileanTaco]

@xp29

Thanks! In case I would do so, indeed, I would only trim that (I have already seen that beardie nails are differently shaped than parakeet nails, they look to me more similar to cat's). But I won't do any trimming at all and keep it how it is.

 

[ChileanTaco]

With all his running around recently (in his enclosure and outside), the nail tips of my "now in puberty" Taco are now really filed down. Just a while ago when he just climbed on me I got cuts from his claws, really like from a knife. However, hadn't got any the last two weeks Looking closely, the very tips of his nails are gone.

 

[xp29]

With all his running around recently (in his enclosure and outside), the nail tips of my "now in puberty" Taco are now really filed down. Just a while ago when he just climbed on me I got cuts from his claws, really like from a knife. However, hadn't got any the last two weeks Looking closely, the very tips of his nails are gone.

Good deal. It makes them much more pleasant to handle

 

[ChileanTaco]

@xp29
Absolutely. My husband already used leather gloves when handling Taco...
(I didn't do so, as I feel more clumsy in gloves and rather somewhat accepted the scratches, but they were really deep. Not nice when the same day you want to squeeze a lemon or cut onions...)

 

[xp29]

@xp29
Absolutely. My husband already used leather gloves when handling Taco...
(I didn't do so, as I feel more clumsy in gloves and rather somewhat accepted the scratches, but they were really deep. Not nice when the same day you want to squeeze a lemon or cut onions...)

No doubt!!!!!