Wednesday 31 October 2007

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!

Tuesday 30 October 2007

The first post is a test post

Testing testing 1, 2 ,3