Next measure IV

Dash remains a 'heathy eater'! But Rapethal is doing well as well. They have enjoyed some small mealworm treats recently, which i a bit of fun.

We measured them today, out of the vivarium for the first time:

Rapethal: age: 12 weeks, length: 26.5 cm

Dash: age: 14 weeks, length 29cm

Next measure III

On mondy we gave them a quick measure:

Rapethal: age: 9.5 weeks, length: 21 cm

Dash: age: 11.5 weeks, length 24.5cm

Again measureing is not that accurate, but it gives an idea. Rapethal really needs to up his eating!! Dash conversely is getting a little fat?!

After the feeding issues

After our concerns about our bearded dragons not eating last week I am pleased to report they eating extremely well. Here is our new feeding schedule:

1) We are now feeding them smaller crickets [classified 'medium' rather than 'standard' from or local reptile shop]. These seem to go down much better.

2) We are feeding them 2 times per day, when it works for us. They are probably eating between 6 and 12 each at each feeding time.

3) I am attempting to only feed them what they will eat. Somtimes I feel they could eat more, but I do not want to leave crickets in the Vivarium. The ballance is a careful one. I am trying to remove any leftover crickets after 15 minutes or so. I don't always get them all though!

4) They are getting 2 no cricket days per week. Friday was supposed to be one, but I gave them some in the morning.

5) They are also enjoying spring greens, as well as other veg.

The result is:
1) They looks forward to feeing time and wait on the feeing rock. Both of them ate crickets that were sitting on my hand.

2) My concern over this is that they are not chasing them around as much.

Next measure

I attempted to do another meaure of the bearded dragons today. It is not a very accurate measure, if I am honet, probably within half a cm though:

Rapethal: age: 8.5 weeks, length: 20 cm

Dash: age: 10.5 weeks, length 22.5cm

If I am in anyway correct then:

1) They are growing well
2) Rapethal is in fact bigger than Dash at the same age. [But we don't have exact birht dates]

All very encouraging, particularly the new successful feeding schedule.

"My Bearded Dragon isn't eating"

What do you do when your bearded dragon isn't eating? That was the concern we have had for the last 2 days.

It tunrs out that we have been a bit lax on the whole feeding thing. Not that we haven't fed them. Rather that we have chuked 15 or so crickets in each day knowing that they hadn't eaten all of them from the day before. They'll pick 'em off in the end, we thought.

The result instead was teh our beaded dragons weren't eating ANY of them?! Weird!

We took a bit of expert advice, and they said: "get all the crickets out of the vivarium and leave them for 24 hours". It was at that point we realised that we had messed up a fair bit, cos we must have cleared out about 20 or so crickets, hidden here, there and everywhere!! We spent lots of time finding them and we still missed one that appeared the next day!!

Here's the theory:

Lizards identify food by movement primarily. If there is movement all the time, they block it out as normal movement, and familiarity causes them to not recognise it as food. This is particulary so if they have over eaten before. By depriving them of the movement and the food, their system gets "reset", and everyone is happy again!!

So that is what we did. Last night we carefully introduced 2 crickets at a time. Dash ate 4 in the end, Rapethal ate none still. 2 got away that we removed from the Viv. Today we were pretty worried. Why was Rapethal not eating? Was he afraid of the crickets? Was he afraid of Dash.

Today both Beardies have been desparately exploring hte viv for food - a good sign!

Our plan tonight wasd to remove Dash and then introduce the crickets to give Rapa and chance. However Dash was more jumpy than normal, presumably cos he was hungry! So we went for it anyway. 4 crickets at a time. And Rapa was the first to eat - hurray!! It was a relief. I think they had somewhere around 8 each and they all went. We decided not to overdo it today and keep them keen for tomorrow!

No one said it would be eay i suppose!

A worry - Dehydrated Bearded Dragons

We did have a fair bit of concern over the beardies yesterday actually. They were not eating and were generally loolking pretty unhealthy.

After some ponderings and web searches, Maddy decided that maybe dehydration was the issue. She sprayed them with water, and pretty soon they were back up and running. Phew!

I has caused us to have a review of feeding shedules and water. I put up what we pan to do when we have decided!!

Measurements 2

[a larger Dash]

I had another measure fo them today, here are the results:

Rapethal: age: 7.5 weeks, length: 18.5 cm

Dash: age: 9.5 weeks, length 20.5cm

Either my measurements were rubbish last time, or grwoth is fairly speedy!! Without doubt Dash is looking larger than when we got them a week ago, and certainyl significantly bigger than Rapethal!

Measurements 1

[Dash is the one above, and seems to be a bit more dominant. Could be just the age though]

It was my plan to try and track their growth. Not too success ful so far becasue i haven't done it, and they are still a bit to jumpy to hold!

Still here was my general effort from Wednesday, 7th 2007

Rapethal; age: 7weeks old, length: 17.5cm

Dash; age: 9 weeks, length: 18.5cm

Keeping Live Crickets

I don't think I have metioned it so far, bhet bearded dragons eat live crickets. Funnily some people have thought the bearded dragon to be quite cute but flipped out at the live crickets!!

So far we have got a pack of crickets from the local reptile centre, and are waiting another couple of boxes from the place where we got the lizards: reptilekeeping.net.

It seems it is much cheaper to buy it larger quantities [it looks like we are gonna get through about 150 crickets a week at this rate].

A couple of places we have found sell them in larger quantities:

Live Foods Direct &

Live foods UK &

Global Live Food

The problem is that as soon as you buy lots [eg 500] then you have got to store them somehow!

We are currently looking at using a large plastic tank. The general advice is as follows

1) Store in a dark place at between 18 and 22 degreesC.
2) Provide food: a saucer of ProGrub, some sliced carrot, potato or apple. But place these away from each other
3) food must be replenished every few days to prevent fruit fly
4) Provide mosture by keeping a damp kitchen or something in the container. but keep it away from the ProGrub.
5) Put some egg cartons in to give them somewhere to hide,. but don't bother with anything else.

advice from live foods direct, and Fresh Live Food even better The Reptile Rooms [with photos].

Early concerns

We have had a couple of concerns about the little bearded dragons, so I thought that I would share them here:

1) Rapa looks smaller than Dash and less on the ball!!
- the pet shop has said that Rapa is 2 weeks younger than Dash. Aaaaah! That'll explain it then! They are 6 and 8 weeks old.

2) They occassionally run so fast that they run into the side of the Vivarium!
- it seems that they are young and when they get scared they are trying to find a way out!! Perfectly normal apparently!

3) They have been very skittish and definitely not to bothered about being held.
- The pet shop reckons that they will get more confident in another month or so. They recommend doing things that get them used to us like putting hands in the vivarium [slowly], and generally being around.

On the positive side:
- they are moving around the vivarium confidently and speedily when chasing food.
- They are eating well, both the live crickets and greens.
- they seem happy with each others company, no fighting at all.

They are all good indicators that they are doing ok.

And they named them...

You may notice that there has so far been no mention of the Bearded Dragons names. That is because there has been a bit of a delay. Jack was naming one and Reuben the other. Jack's name was never in doubt. He has named his beardie after a dragon that he made up for a story for school. Reuben was a little more stuck and got a bit stuck under the pressure! Anyway things are now resoolved and we have two very appropriately named pets. Also we have some close up photos of them!!

So here is:

DASH [named by Reuben]

RAPETAL [named by Jack]

who loves these lizards most??

I have to admit they really are very cute, so far.

I was not especially excited about the whole reptile thing when we first considered it. I thought I would prefer a puppy to be honest. However it is quite hilarious to see Mark so excited about the new additions as the children.

The worst part so far was bringing home live crickets from the reptile shop. The best part so far was that I held them while the boys stroked them. Okay so it does sound like I am sold on the reptiles. But they are not very girly!!!

Maddy

Another Photo

I think you might need this photo to get an idea of the scale!!

They arrived!

They arrived by TNT courier just before 12. Boy I hope they were treated well!

Here's the box:



And then a box in a box:



Come on, open it!!



A box in a box in a box:



Two cute little Beardies on Pride Rock:

We wait

The two bearded dragons are awaited. They are due to arrive by courier before 12noon....

Ready and waiting...

We have a Vivarium. For those who don't know a Vivarium is a fish tank for reptiles!!! We spent a fair bit of time searching one out. Not wanting to spend too much on it all we were looking for second hand ones on ebay. There were a few going mainly formica built stuff - functional but not pretty!

Having decided to have 2 Bearded Dragons, we knew that we needed a tank 4 foot by 2 foot by 2 foot. Pretty large!

Then I had a thought - so you get the tank and then where do you put it and what do you put it on!! We discovered through ebay a guy who makes vivariums out of solid pine that include a cupboard for it to sit on. AND for a very reasonable price. Sorted! It has arrived and we have stained it a dark wood colour to match other furniture on the lounge.

And it is large.

No, its Massive!!

but i think it looks pretty good...

For the set up we have gone for:

1) Heat and light provided by a 160W mercury vapour lamp. this is slightly different than other recommended setups. Normally people recommend a normal spot light, regulated by a thermostat, plus a UVB emitting flourescent tube. The reptile keeping guys we talked to said just get a mercury vapour lamp and have it on for 12-14 hours a day and you are sorted! It is a fairly new setup idea, but we liked the simplciity, so we went for it. We are actually buying our Bearded Dragons from them as well, since they have recommended the setup. The only risky thing was that I had to cut a hole in the lovely pine roof of the vivarium to fit the lamp in!

2)Bark chippings for the substrate. Cor that was a hard one to work through! We have gone for bark becasue it looks good with our setup! Sand was a no-no it seems. The concern about it is that the lizards might eat it and get compaction in their digestive system. Different people say different things can result in compaction!" all very confusing for the teh new starters. We are following advice again from the reptilekeeping.net guys that says that as long as you keep it the same the lizards can cope!

3) We got some drift wood from the beach in Devon for them to climb on!

4) We got some stones off the beach as well to create our "Pride Rock" basking stone!

5) Oh and a bit of cork bark

6) I think it needs of greenery to finish it off but Maddy doesn't think so! We also are not going to bother with a desert scene backdrop - by all accounts they fade, and whats the point in that?

So what is the result? Look here:

Other Lizards

Our choice to finally have lizards was less than averted, I think, by our trip to New Hope, Uganda in the Summer. We all had great fun discovering Chameleons where we were staying. Reuben had great fun in particular!

Here's some photos of the chameleons:

So what's this about Bearded Dragons?

Believe it or not we have been pondering getting bearded dragons for nearly a year. I can't quite remember what started off the idea. it may even have been teh Boothville Primary school summer fete last year where there was a reptile 'zoo' thing. The boys loved all of them. Especially the snakes...

Some time after we took the boys to the repile shop in Northampton - just for a "look-see". Actually we were trying to suss out if they liked the Bearded Dragons. That one kinda backfired because once agian they loved the ..... snakes! in fact they were there working out how long they would have to save their combioned pocket money to afford the cheapest one there. Very sweet ... but there was no way we were having snakes!!

The boys saved their Birthday moneys this year [back in March and April] in the hope that we might let them buy lizards. Cute, eh?

So why Bearded Dragons then? well...

1) They are supposed to be friendly! They like company, make friends with you and will sit on your shoulder and watch TV with you!
2) They are Diurnal. That is they sleep at night. Many lizards are nocturnal.
3) They are the easiest of the reptile pets to keep. So their is some hope for us!

So there you go, we await their arrival!

The first post is a test post

Testing testing 1, 2 ,3