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Finally got our dragon!

syzygy

Bearded Dragon Egg
Messages
17
First, I want to thank everybody for all the advice in the weeks leading up to picking out a dragon. It definitely paid off as this little girl settled in and seemed happy almost immediately. This is Mango!

mango.jpg


The kids drew her some mountains for a background.
She is ~6 weeks old, about 7" total length and is an eating machine. She eats her mustard, collard and turnip green salad and loves the red runner roaches that I allowed to breed out of control in preparation for her arrival. She just ate 44 of them in about 5 minutes.

i still have food related questions, but I'll post that in the appropriate place.

Thanks again everybody!
 

Hdrydr31

Bearded Dragon Veteran
Staff member
3 Year Member
1,000+ Post Club
Messages
5,574
Congratulations!! She is stunning!! Great colors!
 

syzygy

Bearded Dragon Egg
Messages
17
I wanted to post an update here since we have some new questions / concerns.

First, though, here is a recent pic of Mango. She's now 4.5 months old, 290grams in weight and 14.5" in length. She was an eating machine for the first couple months. I had bred thousands of red runner roaches that I'd expected would grow in size with her and sustain us for 6 months. She ate them in 6 weeks...typically taking 60 at a time twice a day. She almost always would have eaten more, but it just seemed insane. She was also eating 2 decent size salads each day.

mango2.jpg


A couple weeks after getting her we took her to a local vet who did a fecal exam and found high levels of pinworms and protozoa. She did 3 days of antibiotics (don't recall which one ATM) followed by 3 weeks off, another 3 days on and then 2 weeks off before submitting a new sample. They found a very small amount of pinworms and suggested we could use Fenbendazole to completely wipe out those that remained. I declined because I'd read that complete eradication was not desirable and also that this is not what Fenbendazole does. She was still eating great and her poo was a lot less liquidy and smelly so we were happy.

Ironically, a couple week later she became very picky about eating her bugs. She also started staying in her hide and not coming out to bask or eat some days. She's not old enough to brumate so we've been removing the hide during the day. She does still eat her salad most days and has been just maintaining weight. She also seems much more nervous and prone to periods of glass surfing and in general seems afraid or nervous around us (though she had never been aggressive or anything like that). She basks a lot as well, but won't eat or enter her hide if she sees that we are watching. Previously she seemed to love picking dubia off of my hands. The only bugs she will eat now are phoenix worms or superworms that we can leave in a bowl and partake when we are not around. Previously we had alternated between those 2 types of worms each day for her first meal and she had red runner or dubia roaches for her 2nd meal. Crickets stink so we've avoided them, but could give it a try to see if the hopping is more stimulating for her.

We don't handle her a lot, but she seems cool with it when we do. I wouldn't say she enjoys it, but she's chill and hangs out. She gets baths 2-3 times a week and seems OK with that too.

Maybe its just a phase. Definitely open to input from those here with more experience. Thanks!
 

PatsyB

Super Moderator
Staff member
1,000+ Post Club
Beardie Club
Messages
9,390
Location
Chicago
As they get older and bigger they start to taper off how much they eat. It is possible she’s gotten a little tired of dubia and is just wanting something different. I would go easy on the super worms because they are high in fat and she is already a good size, you don’t want her getting obese.

It is possible too, that now that she’s done with her course of antibiotics and the parasites are under control, that she’s just not as hungry as she used to be. She’s not sharing her food with parasites anymore so it’s all hers. My girl Dolly was a bottomless pit when she had pinworms. after antibiotics I couldn’t get her to eat for months and then she finally started eating again but she didn’t want as much.
 
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