I have an 11 month old bearded dragon named Gir. He's my pride and joy, I think he's fantastic, though he can be a bit moody at times (like his master) and doesn't like being outside.. He's always been a good eater, he eats and eats and eats. However, every now and then, he'd go off his food for a few days, then perk back up and gobble down a load of it. So I wasn't too worried two weeks ago when he only ate half of what I put in front of him. I did get worried though when this continued to happen, he's been barely eating at all now. He hasn't lost any weight but he did pick up a couple of new traits.
1) He was now depositing all of his "material" on the opposite side of the tank than he usually does.
2) The now clean side of the tank he was ripping to shreds. He was spending ages clawing at that side of the tank, trying to rip through it.
3) Every time that I took him out he would go galloping off exploring, now this isn't unusual in itself, beardies are very curious, but generally he'd explore, then settle down and go to sleep somewhere out of the way, now he was racing back and forward searching for something.
I had my suspicions as to what might cause this, but wasn't at all sure, so I brought him into the petshop I bought him from on Sunday to have my suspicions confirmed. He is a she.
It's very hard to tell the difference in lizards until they're older, so I had thought that he was a he all of this time. Even looking at photos on the web didn't help much because, unless you know beardies well (and this was my first one), you couldn't tell the difference in the size of the head, width of the tails, beard colour or behaviour (she is *not* passive, she actually enjoys displaying at herself when she thinks that no one is looking). The one certainty is bumps under their tails, two with a dimple in between == male, one == female. Gir had none, so I couldn't tell. Anyhews, bringing her in they were able to discern the eggs under her skin and tell me that she should have laid already, hence the clawing at her tank.
In lizards, this is a potentially fatal problem. Without a proper place to lay, the lizard will become eggbound and that's not good. Anyways, to cut things short, I now have a laying area in her tank for her to use, and put lots of greens (with a *load* of calcium supplement) in for her. Hopefully she'll have gotten rid of some of those eggs by the time I get home.
Oh, and the petshop were also very impressed with her, they said that she was "perfect" and "the best beardie I've seen in here" and "I'm not just saying that" and they were thrilled that she was one of their own, and a little disappointed that I wasn't selling her as she'd be perfect for breeding. She's also gone up in worth by aboot 100euro. So I'm well chuffed in all, I've raised a fine healthy lizard :D It's her birthday next month, can anyone think of any good presents to get her?
This nature lesson is ended.
-d
2 comments:
A little boy lizard?
Then there could be lots of little baby lizards?
I don't have enough space for two at the moment, plus I'd have to make sure that it was a boy, and that they were the same age/size (otherwise the bigger one would eat the littler) so I think she can wait a while to have a guy in her life!
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