rescued a dragon today... help!!!

[Kiersa]

Hello everyone, so I went to my local reptile store today to get cockroaches for my beardie Pedro. I saw this hopeless little dragon and the store owner told me that his original owner had just dropped him off a couple hours before. They never gave him any kind of uvb light, never gave him calcium powder and just fed him lettuce with occasional bugs. His front left leg is deformed, but he seems to get around fairly well. He is a little over a year old and about 7" long.

My concern is that my other beardie is UPSET... head bobbing, stomping his feet things he had never done before. Can he smell him? Will he calm down over time? I'm afraid I thought more with my heart than my head.
I don't want to upset my baby

 

[jager]

I don't have much experience with beardies yet and am still learning so I can't really offer any advice but I think rescuing him was wonderful. Good for you

 

[PatsyB]

Cover the new ones tank on 3 sides so that Pedro can't see him, that should get him to calm down.

 

[Kiersa]

How long should I keep it covered?

 

[PatsyB]

I guess I would do it until things settle down, then slowly start showing Pedro the baby in it's tank.

 

[Kiersa]

OK, thank you!

 

[Kiersa]

Just a small update on Smalls, she seems to be doing better. She had a worm yesterday and a bit of baby food. She was pretty upset to be put back in her tank so we had to cover part of it and she went straight to sleep. My older dragon so isn't too sure, but she seems to peek to a bit when he bobs... I'm attaching a couple progress pics

 

[Kiersa]

New home

 

[Canicke]

Baby steps. I love good news!

 

[PatsyB]

Slowly but surely!

One thing I would do though is get rid of the red light at night. They can see that with their third eye and it can disrupt their sleep cycle which will contribute to a cranky upset dragon during the day. As long as your tank doesn't get below 65 degrees at night then you don't need any heat. If it does get below that you should use something that doesn't give off light like a CHE.

 

[Kiersa]

Oh yes... I never use a red light, that picture is of what she was kept in by the previous owner for the least year only I only use the zoo-med mercury vapor bulbs and ceramic heat emitters for my beardie s. She just doesn't want to be in the tank, she is getting better though.

I still can't get her to eat veggies, but she did have another worm with calcium powder, tonight is 50/50 bath with water and pedyalite

 

[PatsyB]

Okay good. As far as the salad goes, don't stress too much about it right now. She's still little and they need more protein at this point anyway. Some little ones don't take to greens right away.

 

[Kiersa]

OK, I'm still offering her greens. She is living her butter worms, however I have read that butter worms are more like candy for them. She certainly is not fast enough to catch a cockroach and no one in my area sells horn worms. Thoughts?

 

[PatsyB]

Make sure you are dusting the butterworms. If you use dubia you can put them in a bowl and she can just eat out of the bowl. I know they can't climb glass bowls (also crickets can't climb glass), I've also seen people putting their dubia in a small metal dog/cat bowl and they seem to stay in there. That is just dubia though, I recently bought a different type of roach I forget the name but was told they were "clumsy climbers" and boy could those things climb! One quickly scurried up the side of the glass tank and almost jumped out!

 

[Kiersa]

I have some super small Dubai's left out of the larger ones I feed to Pedro. Im going to put her in the sink tonight and see if she can catch one or two. I dust the butter worms, I'm just happy she is eating and dunning water... Still terribly skittish though

 

[Kiersa]

Success! She's loves the cockroaches, snatched them up right away! Hey first vet apointment is tomorrow

 

[PatsyB]

Great! Hope everything goes well at the vet.