Bearded Dragon Care!

So you want to get a

bearded

dragon

. Well, I've sold a lot of

bearded

dragon

s in my

care

er, let's say, and let me tell you, I've developed a routine over time of repeating the same things and it's the first time I think about it today. I should probably film this it also helps people on the internet so let me rate. I have a degree in applied animal science and have since worked in reptile stores until this Fortnite, so I have sold a lot of bearded dragons. I have advised many new owners so they can be sure that what I am telling you now has been stress tested so before we get into the topic of bearded dragons there are things you need to know so I think we should start with things.

That might put you off right away. This is an animal with a similar lifespan to some dogs, so a bearded dragon will live a good run of 15 to 18 years, so there is a long commitment. It's not like a hamster and most people think that. yes, it's a lizard, it's probably like a hamster, a two or three year contract, a nice pet before going to college, no, no, this is the lifespan of a dog, this is a long-term commitment Secondly, let's talk about the financial costs of running and a nursery for a beardie. dragon, before we even get into the initial outlay, let's go over the running costs and the electricity before we go anywhere because that might put people off, so let's go over that and I've got it written down here with the calculations because I can't.

Do this spontaneously, so let's say we have a standard nursery with a 100 watt bulb, a 22 watt UVB, and a 22 watt LED, giving a total of 0, 0.144 kilowatts, so in one day we do it. It will do if you have it on a 12 hour period, that is 12 hours on and off at night, so you are using 1,728 watts. If we are going to use my own tariff as an example, I have a tariff of 33 pence per kilowatt hour, now we use that for this calculation. for your sake, that's 57p a day to run a nursery, that's 3.99 a week, 15.96 a month and that's £191 and 60p a year now, if we take that for a 15 year lifespan , so we spent 2874 pounds on a 15-year lifespan, so just under three thousand dollars on 15 years, so you're going to spend money to heat this vivarium, that's the cost of keeping the animal, not including the food decorations, cleaning costs anything else, just electricity, that's what you're going to spend now.

Some people are already saying, yeah, I'm fine, I don't want to, but for some people, when you compare that to the cost of owning a dog, a dog can cost tens of thousands over its 15- to 20-year lifespan. If you run a good race, this might not put some people off, perfect because it shouldn't put you off. There are wonderful animals. I love bearded dragons very much, so you are initial. Keeping a bearded dragon is the industry minimum is a four. for two for two vivarium now just because that's what the industry has decided is a minimum doesn't mean that's necessarily what you want to look for for your bearded dragon let me tell you I have a little ramp from this vivarium downhill with my bearded and She goes in and out and wanders around the room.

This Bitter Dragon uses the entire room so when I tell you to be as big as you can because they are going to use it and later you may feel that when you see your bearded dragon in a four by two by two you feel like actually this not enough I need to make it bigger let's get into the element of buying a small enclosure for a baby in a later update many people want to come as a customer and say, oh yeah, I'll get the smaller, cheaper setup now and upgrade later . That's a problem multiplied by six months.

Let's be cheap for now. My advice to you is not to do that, let's say a three by two by two nursery. for a baby it weighs 150 pounds, but a four by two by two weighs 250 pounds. My advice would be to go straight to the forefoot because why spend 150 and then 250 later when you can spend 250 on the forefoot and that better Dragon will do it. Being able to happily wear your forefoot all the way into adulthood and then if you really feel like you need to upgrade. I'm not happy with my 4x2x2. I want to update it, but at least it's a four for two. two, so I would recommend that you always spend the money that will save you money in the long run.

What's the point of spending £250 and then £150? 50 pounds where you can spend 200 feet of squid, so what you will have to do is Warm up this animal. Now bearded dragons are heliothermic, which means they worship the Sun. What that means is they go out and bask in the sun and warm themselves that way, so we need to do things in Siberia to try to replicate sunlight as much as possible. possible. So for the infrared or thermal element of sunlight, we use a masking bulb. Now it can be an incandescent or halogen basketball. The only difference between these two bulbs is that an incandescent is a heat bulb with a coil between two prongs like a standard light.

The old-fashioned bulb and the halogen bulb are the same, but the coil bulbs are encapsulated in a small glass vial with halogen gas inside, which makes them more efficient and allows them to heat up, plus most people with the forefoot use between 75 watts to 100 watts, these can be as cheap as 4.99 if you opt for an Arcadia flood type or just an incandescent or if you opt for a halogen, they can weigh 15 pounds and then control this heat source which you will need a thermostat now all a thermostat does is allow you to set a temperature on the thermostat and there is a probe that goes into the cabinet now this probe is based on the temperature it feels the thermostat decides hey my probe is actually hotter than I've set the temperature so I'm going to dim the power to the heater or the opposite, or my probes are actually as hot as the temperature set for me, so I want to keep supplying heat, so what that does is enable Basically, once the probe reaches the temperature you set, it modulates and dims the power to the bulb.

You will need a dimming thermostat for a light bulb; Otherwise, those that have pulses or are off constantly turn the bulb on and off. quickly and you can burn out the bulb, so you want a good thermostat with dimming, like with room lights, if your dimmer switch where you can dim the light down and up, that's essentially the thermostat you want on a thermostat with dimming, now you want to place this probe. the nursery now, where you put that probe in the nursery, it differs depending on who you ask or what you need to understand is that the only way this works is for the F temperature probe to increase or decrease power depending on the temperature set on the thermostat If you don't have a contextual understanding of where you are placing that probe, that contextual understanding must come from you, so you can have the probe on the warm end near or below the heating point and then set it to a warming point temperature. warm warming. and then modulate it that way or you can do the opposite and put it on the cold end and set it for the maximum coolant temperature you want to regulate a safe escape of heat for the bearded dragon and if the air temperature rises If it is higher than the maximum comfortable coolant temperature you have set will dim the power to the bulb, so you can do any of those techniques depending on your understanding of how a thermostat probe actually works.

Now, let's look at the temperatures a little. A bearded dragon ideally wants a heating point of 40 to 45 surface temperature below the heating point and the reason we use asking the surface temperature is because we have not fully understood how to measure infrared, but so widely in the hobby are those of We use equipment to measure the infrared omission of a heat bulb and we use it to measure our heating points, but that is a very advanced technique and is not standard for the industry as a whole, so I ideal is to use 40 to 45. The surface temperature under the basketball and then on the ASM shows that it is between 30 and 28 25 in the cold end area that would be without radiation.

You want it to be sort of a 25 to 30 area, now you're going to want UV rays, in addition to this, now play a role in regulating vitamin D, which allows bearded dragons to absorb calcium into their diet to make sure they avoid diseases such as metabolic bone disease. Bearded dragons eat vegetation and eat insects that neither of them have. a lot of preformed vitamin D, in fact, plants only have D2 and insects don't have a lot of vitamin D because it's not really animal meat in the same way that if you ate it like a rat or a mouse, you don't. you should feed them or after a mouse that's just an example so as an omnivore who relies more on the sun for vitamin D the UVB stick is vitally important so for UVB I don't really recommend the UVB coil type just because it is more suitable. for really small animals, so when you have the coil on its side, the beam angle is very very small and narrow for UV rays, which is fine if you have a really very small animal on the bottom, but if you have it is There's a lot of dragon going on, there's something, a narrow beam on its back that doesn't really cover the animal and isn't really appropriate, so what I recommend is a linear flood T5 kit.

Now Arcadia has the T5 pro kit. You can find a similar reptile equivalence. systems or Zoo mid or exoterra just a UVB bar, there's a T5 and then you'll want to base it on a four by two by two, you're looking at a 12 Pro T5 kit because that works with a UVI of about four at the right distance, all of this has worked based on a four by two by two, so you don't want to get a four by two by eighteen, don't get a 4x2 by 15, you really want that two foot height, not just for the animal to climb a little bit because it climbs a lot in nature, but it's also intended for that UV safety margin, so I won't go into the horrendous details if you really want to learn the ins and outs of UV rays. then I have dedicated videos for that, but as a basic understanding for a new goalie, you basically want to make sure that you have a four by two by two and a 12 and that's what pretty much has you sorted, so you want to have that bar like a third to half of the nursery grouped on the side with heat because you want to have a patch of sunlight and a patch of shade like in nature, the bearded dragon will go out, find a nice sunny place to sunbathe, go up and sunbathe, then when I want to cool off, they will go into the shade so that it is in the sunlight out of the sunlight and that allows a dragon to be built to regulate the entry and exit of those two stages.

Now those two things, UVB and heat, are what are needed. to keep the bearded dragon alive that is the basic minimum you should do to keep it alive but if we do a little more we can include an LED bar which I really recommend as the LED bar provides a lot of brightness. The light that hormonally stimulates the bearded dragon not only makes the construction not only makes the nursery look brighter and more pleasant for you to enjoy and see the colors of the animal and the environment, but bearded dragons have the parietal eye in the superior. the head have a third eye this is a very primitive eye it is not the same as the eyes eyepieces on the side basically works as a light dosimeter that separates light from shadow now used to find the best sunbathing spots in the wild the brighter, the more intense the sunlight, the more optimal the sunbathing spot, usually with a richer UV and the hotter it is in nature, normally that is the case, so it has evolved to look for bright spots to sunbathe and that stimulates the melatonin cycle and when they should do it. sleeping when they should be active and other hormones in the body it's very, very healthy for them to have this bright light there so I really recommend that you do that and it should be grouped on the same side as the heat and the UV rays. a link cable that goes from the LED to the UV so you can plug both into a single socket if you're using the Arcadia kits, so you want everything bunched up on one end up to a third of that is the length of the barbet. dragon or in the middle of the bavarium, so there is a patch of shadow on the other side.

Now let's go back to the thermostat probe, now that you understand the sunlight patch and then the shadow patch, how the probe works, obviously, if the probe heats itself and this is how it reads the temperature now, if the probe in the most cases it is black, so the black absorbs heat and radiation and you get a high temperature more than the actual temperature of the air, it doesn't matter because you are heating the probe, so the ideal is to have the probe at the cold end my technique um , the way I like to do it is to have it on the cold end out of the radiation because that is a true reflection of the temperature of theair and then set it to the warmest air temperature I can I feel comfortable there, I understand they don't dim heat sources so it's the same reason why if you're in a field and you're standing in the shade of a tree, it's cold, but if you go out.

In the sunlight you get hot, that is not because the air temperature has changed from there to there, it is because you have gone from the shadow to the sun's radiation to no radiation and that is the same in the nursery, the air temperature does not change. from one end of this four foot box from here to here the difference is radiation, not radiation and that's basically what you need to understand to make sure you understand why your probe might be acting that way, so some people have the probe at the warm, narrow end. lights and then like it's a reading influx and they're taking the fig or fiddling with the thermostat and they find a sweet spot because they can't understand that they have the probe under radiation, if you have the cold temperature, learn if you have the probe on the cold end and the technique that I described, then you can set the maximum air temperature and if it does not touch any object and it is not under sunlight and it is sticking out in the air, it will be a true reflection of the air temperature in the nursery with baby bearded dragons and the temperatures that people say oh you should give them 35 degrees and 40-45 from an adult, don't listen.

For that, just provide everything from 40 to 45 degrees in a sunbathing spot, better, dragons don't need less heat, it's just that at 35 degrees with a body that was much smaller and with less surface area, how much The less heat entering them was enough to warm them properly. at the optimal core body temperature of 35 degrees it's not because babies need adults terribly, they are just a smaller body mass, you get away with less heat and when that bearded dragon grows and the body gets bigger and There is fat storage on the back and some of these fat bearded dragons at the same temperature the heat does not reach and warm the core adequately there is adipose tissue on the back that blocks the passage of radiation and the bigger and faster they lay a dragon, the more heat they need to get to 40 45 is the sweet spot for all of this, the sun doesn't change in nature because it's like, oh, there's a baby there, I'll just cool down a little bit, that's not how it works 40 40 a 45 is a The sweet spot for the Basking point maybe up to 50 in some cases now to measure you want a reliable temperature gun, which is like that, a lot of you saw this during the pandemic, it's someone who has a laser, some of them, don't they point it out? an object and you press the button and it will read the infrared emission of an object.

A lot of you have it pointed at your forehead during covert checks and things like that, buy one of those where you can read the Basking dot on the compound and you calculate the temperature of the surface of the Rock and you get between 40 and 45 degrees and , in some cases, 50 degrees where you're sunbathing, and to measure air temperature, like I said, you probably want to get an Exoterra digital thermometer and then put that probe somewhere. the cold end is out of the radiation, it doesn't touch any object, it doesn't touch the wall, it sticks out into the air and that will be a true reflection of the temperature of the air at that close, so let's get into the kind of bearded dragon sex that maybe you want.

They are very similar, but both sexes have different characteristics, so a female can relieve infertile so with the males. They have quite prominent moral pores, which is a waxy secretion under their hind legs at the base of the tail, they need rough objects in the enclosure to wax it, rub this wax to remove excess, otherwise it may become blocked, to males They like to raise Bob's very worn head and establish a territory and send signals to rivals who are out there or to females who might see them in the distance, where there is another piece of dragon there or not, they will exhibit this behavior, sometimes even With you, some people opt for males because they don't have to deal with laying eggs, but what I will tell you is that this is the only reason a female bearded dragon lays eggs without mating is because there are excess calories. .

Female bitter dragons do not lay eggs in the wild unless they have been mated by a male, so when we have the influx of lots of little dragons in captivity laying lots of interfertile eggs every year, it's not because that's what they do. what bearded dragons do, it is because there are excess calories. there and we are feeding them too much. I learned this from the beautiful bear, my female Beta Dragon was lying down first or on her legs and then I learned this from the beauty vet, there's an X for calories and I thought, oh okay, and I cut back. food and lo and behold she hasn't laid infertile eggs as that's how many calories we put into the animal so if you're worried oh I don't have to deal with the eggs it really is a must do. with diets and you can control that when you get into this so let's get into the diet a little bit so bearded dragons are primarily a species.

I am never a species divided between an insectivorous diet and a herbivorous diet. Now the diet is sexist and biased in the direction they take. go a little, but males, a mature male normally has 80 percent vegetation in the world and obviously 20 insects per female because they have egg-laying tasks and more protein needs, it is normally 60 percent insects to 40 vegetation , babies are usually the same, 60 insects to 40. vegetation Now, the mistake that is mostly made in captivity is that we feed animals too many insects, so one of the tropes you'll see floating around the internet is that perhaps bearded dragons need to feed them as many insects as they can. eat as many insects in five minutes as you will eat in 15 minutes feed them feed them feed them don't do that don't do that it's one of those myths that have arisen that are simply unfounded it's not true and it's where we have a lot of metabolic bone diseases it arises because people are introducing food in these little dragons without the same amount of calcium, so let me explain, dragons need a very similar ratio of calcium to phosphorus in their blood to us and for most other vertebrates, so normally it is a ratio of calcium to phosphorus two to one and that's fine as long as calcium is provided in the diet so they get a calcium to phosphorus ratio of two to one the problem is insects don't have a skeleton they have an exoskeleton and they don't They store calcium the same way a vertebrate would, so their exoskeleton is mostly phosphorus, so when you feed a lot of insects, you put phosphorus into the animal, which is fine because it needs phosphorus but it also needs twice as much calcium. with phosphorus to maintain homeostasis in the blood plasma, that is why we use calcium powders and put them on the insects so that the calcium enters with the insects.

What happens with these baby bitter dragons is that they are putting as much phosphorus and as many insects as possible into these animals in 15 minutes and then you need to put double that amount of calcium into them, but because they are putting so much food into them they don't get as much. calcium, so a growing bearded dragon might need a calcium to phosphorus ratio of five to one and when you add just pure phosphorus every day, as much as it will eat for 15 minutes and then some people don't provide it. with as much calcium as that, that's where they run into metabolic bone disease and impactions because of that, because they've done it through a skewed diet of just plowing phosphorus, so don't go crazy just feeding them as much food as may be possible. possible, the best way I can describe it is a little bit of intuition here, but the best way I've heard the guest I had on this podcast Heather Moy, who was a bit of a dragon breeder in Florida, describe it, is the way that she described it.

Do you feed them and make them run towards it and then you can see this as an inherent hunger in the numbness, this eagerness to get to the food and then over time you can see that they become a little bit slower, like I'm slowing down. fastening the seatbelt? a little bit um and they start to get closer to the food, not all of this is excitement like hunger, but just because yeah, I like the food, but now I'm pretty full, but I'm going to continue because I like it in this sweet spot. where it's like Wander around and say yes I'll eat some, yes I'll eat some more, but it's not like Bam Bam Bam Bam food food food at that point I would say Heather stops because at that point you know they're not hungry they're just They are eating because they like to eat at that moment, so you can stop there, so they will not eat as much as in 15 minutes, that depends on the intuition of the individual, it could be five to ten errors, it could be that.

They could be $15 depending on the size of the bugs you're feeding and whatever, blah, blah, blah, so what I would say is provide calcium to those bugs and then watch how they act if they start to get a little slack. a little bit and they say, oh, you know, I'm full, but I really like the taste of these bugs. You can find that sweet spot and then you can stop there every day or every other day, I would say, to feed them. I don't feed as much as most people, bearded dragons in captivity reach adulthood at an incredibly fast rate compared to their counterparts in the wild, as they are growing very fast because people feed baby bearded dragons a ridiculous amount of bugs every time.

One time you can regulate that and grow them slowly and slowly so that they reach adulthood in a year and a half or even two years. You don't have to like feeding them energy. You know, speed them up in this process. Alright. You can take your time with it, you have a cute little bearded dragon, why not enjoy the time you spend with them when you are a baby? Build a dragon and then with vegetation. What I would do with baby bitter dragons is simply provide them with vegetables every day. The mayor may or may not take it, but that's okay, vegetables aren't really a problem and they cause problems, they'll take it or leave it.

Some people struggle to get baby bitter dragons to eat vegetation and part of that comes with the mythology, if you will, of plowing as many insects in 15 minutes into the animal, well of course if you do that every day and there are things full of insects, they won't want to eat the smaller vegetation because it's not as tasty as insects, it's like a child, if you constantly give them sweets, they won't want to eat their vegetables, so if you follow that routine of feeling like a bunch of insects and even at next day, if you just feed the vegetation, the bearded dragon might hold out where it's like it's not going to eat, I'll just wait and feed the Bucks, so if you get into a really healthy habit from the start, which is hard because If you could buy a bearded dragon. a breeder or a store that is dedicated to introducing them to a lot of similar insects, you can inherit a bearded dragon with some really bad habits, it will take some time to get them out of that, but the answer is just tough love and don't give them insects until they eat their vegetables, they won't starve from not eating anything and they will die, they will reach a point where they will realize, oh, I'm going to have to eat now I can't wait for the bugs next time and then when those vegetables are constantly obvious and constantly present, they will say, "Okay, I'll eat my vegetables and then over time they will start eating more and more." vegetables you just have to have a little tough love and a little courage for yourself and even when they are begging in the bugs cup you just need to hold on and say no you have vegetables, eat your vegetables Very good advice for the baby eat vegetables is a

care

ss and they get into little packages that are really fresh, nutritious as the water content, full search sprouts.

Bitter dragons tend to love babies. Builder dragons tend to love the grays on that and that can be a really good introduction to eating vegetation and then you can include weeds like dandelions and dandelion flowers and things like that. I have a whole video on how you can pick weeds for free to feed your bitter dragons. You find that your bearded dragon requires you to cut things very well so that they are not huge leaves that are given to a baby with a dragon with a small mouth, but that's okay, it takes five minutes to cut some vegetables so you can do it too.

What I will say is that you don't really need to feed bearded dragons fruits. You will find a lot of videos of people feeding them fruits on social media and stuff, because for a little dragon it is actually very tasty, but in the wild. Now there is no fruit, bearded dragons have what they call contour teeth, which actually have no teeth, it's just that their jaw isserrated on the top to act as teeth now if they get cavities from the sugar and things from the fruits if they get them. like cavities and things like that, that's basically what they do because they don't have teeth to renew or anything like that, it's their jaw bone, so if you have cavities, rot and holes in your jaw, beta Joneses have a very hard time. wrong, so We only have one game of Jaws, we really need to take care of them and that influences me limiting fruit, whether in moderation or even completely, lately it's been completely, they don't need it, no need to spill it if not.

You don't need to spend money on it and two, now you don't need it, flowers and stuff, yes, because in nature they eat a lot of flowers, bright colored flowers, yes, and now types of flowers that you can feed them, like hibiscus and dandelion flowers, um and things like that. I would say do your research and see what types of flowers you can feed, but I have other videos on this channel to help you with all that, so you can see those reasons why they like them. so much fruit is tasty two is really bright and the brightness the colors provoke a stronger feeding response like wood for flowers in nature in nature are just herbaceous vegetation and flowers in nature the reason why the calcium problem It is not a problem for the Wild because they eat plants in nature with a very high calcium content, so, like Wild Sage in nature, it can have a ratio of 20 to 1.

So when they eat Some insects are just pure phosphorus, but they also eat vegetation, which is 20 to one. That's how they feed. We maintain that homeostasis of a two to one ratio of blood in the blood plasma if we constantly give these bearded dragons phosphorus phosphorus phosphorus the bitter dragon has to extract calcium from the bone to increase the calcium levels in the blood to maintain homeostasis and it happens that, over a long period of time, the bones weaken and become brittle and sometimes even rubbery, and that is where fractures occur, bones bend and bones become weak, and that This is what is called metabolic bone.

Diseases, so the diet itself can cause it's not just the case of UV rays or anything like that. If you don't have enough UV rays then it won't allow them to synthesize vitamin D on their own, which of the vitamin D helps them absorb calcium? the intestine, so if they don't have enough vitamin D in their bodies, they can't actually absorb the calcium in the intestine, no matter how much you feed them, if the vitamin D is not there, then you really need to have that ultraviolet spot. Besides making sure you don't throw fossils into them, if you're really worried you can get a pot of pure calcium, which is just pure flat CA, not a multivitamin because the stuff in it is powerful synthetic vitamins and minerals. which are fat soluble, in some cases you just want pure calcium which you can put in a bowl and put it in a small medicine enclosure and allow the baby Bitter Dragon to lick and take calcium at will.

I don't see any problem with providing a lot of calcium. in a bowl that way, to give a bearded dragon an overdose of calcium, you would really have to like spoon feed them like loads and loads and loads of calcium. Realistically that's not going to happen so I'm very comfortable providing ad libertum amounts of calcium so bearded dragons grow up with constant access now with the diet you really want to mix that diet up and give them a really balanced diet. There are some people who say, "Oh, don't feed crickets, they smell or risk carrying." pinworms, that risk exists for all species that are kept as live food, kept in the same places, in the same conditions, probably in really high density quantities where pinworms and things like that can travel.

I wouldn't be deterred from providing a really advanced diet of like crickets this week, locusts and cockroaches next, these wax worms mixed with mealworms mixed with blah blah blah blah blah blah, they provide a diet really balanced because that's what they would get in the wild and there are different macro and micronutrient contents of each different species that by providing a well-balanced diet, you are setting your bearded dragon up to be most successful in getting the nutrients it should. have and that, when touching the mealworms, some people like to provide the baby belug or the mealworm dish constantly, they don't.

Same problem with what I said about getting as much sleep in 15 minutes as the phosphorus problem they're going to do, which is that you also have to provide a bowl of calcium constantly. I just wouldn't do that because I like to regulate the quantity. Understand that it's not the '90s anymore, don't provide a dish of impromptu mealworms and you'll hear me say that many of them aren't the '90s anymore, don't do that, so let's talk about thermoregulation and substrate. dragons in the wild everyone thinks this is all about oh yeah back off come back here you throw me but they use their bellies to thermally regulate so in the summer when it gets too hot in the pig on a day and the dragons do not come. in the Basque Country early in the morning and maybe even in the afternoon, the termites in that area come out very late at night, where the humidity increases and it is not as hot and the termites can survive outside.

This is when bearded dragons eat a lot of the termites, they get soft and then what do they do? You can't go down because the sun has already set, so find a warm rock or some asphalt. The road has been warming up all day but it is still hot because it is re-radiating. all this heat that is absorbed throughout the day and they press their bellies and make pancakes and use it to digest all the finished things they just ate, so Betty, hey, Billy, heat plays a role in further regulation of bearded dragons, but also on the reverse cooldown. below, so bearded dragons, have you been perching for years shaking your head signaling doing territorial displays?

Sometimes they do it even if they are too hot because it is a primary signaling communication by moving their head from the territorial position to the Prime Sentry position, no matter how hot they are. is when they pass this point and they get too hot, they need to cool down, so what they will do is they will jump, they will go into the shade and they will press their bellies against the cold sand in the shade that they will allow. the heat from their belly dissipates into this cold sand, so all this sand plays a role and also a thermoregulation of bearded dragons, so let's get into the big buzzword impaction, now impaction occurs when blockages in the bearded dragon they don't allow it to pass feces and it gets shocked and then it dies now what most people don't realize is that people say oh stop the loose substrates the loose substrates the sand is the problem that is causing them to look shocked before we get into all the scientific stuff for you, let me tell you about this, bearded dragons live in sand in nature, it's sand, living sand in nature, so why would they die from sand captivity, but not in nature?

Well, the reason is that impaction only happens when a few things happen, whether the animal is severely dehydrated so it can't lubricate its internal organs and the things in its intestines to separate things smoothly, also when temperatures are not enough, when they cannot be properly heated, so your digestive system and internal structures are not. they work properly and can't metabolize things or move things properly, they are low in vitamin D, which means vitamin D is really necessary for muscle contraction and parastatis of the intestines, if they are really low in vitamin D and you does not have them.

If they don't have proper lighting, they may have difficulty moving things in general, no matter what's inside, and the biggest part is that most bitter dragons that are diagnosed with impaction also have metabolic bone disease of undiagnosed early onset, so when this happens when they have a metabolic bone disease, the animal does not function properly and cannot move things the same way a normal, healthy dragon would, so a normal bearded dragon and A healthy person who is not seriously hampered by any health problem can pass the substrate easily. It is not a problem, in fact, in my opinion, it is a welfare problem that does not allow them to be able to dig like wood nature to be able to have that cushioning of that soft substrate and not hit the hard wall of the tires or Linen or towels of paper, these animals have only one pair of knees and if they are constantly on hard, compacted ground, they can have arthritic problems later on and if you are like me and want your bearded dragon to live to a proper old age. 15-18 you don't want arthritis to be the main cause of having to do sts from the start, so I use Sands and recommend substrates.

It's not the 90s anymore, we don't have to worry so much about not providing substrates. The only reason the animal suffers impaction is because the animal has a health problem that is causing it, it is not because the substrate is the problem, it is the health problem, that is the problem, it is like saying oh, I I fell and cut myself and then I say that. the blood is the problem, not the fact that I fell on the sand or the impact is just the symptom of the problem, not the cause of the problem, but bearded dragons can be impacted by anything that can be impacted on vegetation which can be impacted. the exoskeleton of insects that can be impacted by some kitchen paper they ate or something, so impaction is just impaction, it doesn't matter what you use, if you have an animal that is not healthy, they can be impacted anyway, like this What, what are you going to do? to not give it sand or substrate that it needs for the rest of its life because you're worried about it getting compacted well, to really not risk it getting compacted at all, then you won't have to feed the animal either and what is that. what it's going to do, it's going to kill it, so exoskeletons can also be affected when the animal is not healthy and it's not going to happen if your animal is healthy, if you get the right lighting, the temperature is right, you're hydrated, you'll be well what if you are really still not convinced that my best dragon is in the pure sand and has been for the last two years and has adenovirus so you could say he is less healthy than a bearded dragon without it in fact, Alright.

I've been through all the work with her, had blood work done, had her examined, everything goes well, she's not affected and in fact she actually has very high calcium levels and is in very good health even though It's on pure sand so you don't have to use pure sound like I do. I'm just saying that loose substrates are not the bane of the bearded dragon's existence. I was there, they would not exist in nature, they will be dead, so when you meet groups they will tell you oh you can't have substrates they will kill it that comes from a place of lack of Education they don't know this because there is an animal with a health problem not because Oh the problem is the sound so don't worry you want a good substrate for them to root in and use it to regulate heat and also to give them a gentle amount of pressure and a little bit of suspension for your joints and more. you want some skins some logs some opportunity to climb I use cork flooring there if I had to go into a tunnel if she wants them you can dig under a kitchen floor and build a small burrow you can build small burrows by building a box and put a hole saw on top and then put similar things around that kind of picture and well you can go down into a burrow, that's what I would probably recommend as decoration and then some kind of rock under the basking spot just so that the rock heats up and gives you some belly heat and then when the heating goes off after the period you've set, that bitter dragon can use it as belly heat if it wants some supplemental warming as the rock cools down for a while. the night and it's free. it's free to heat that way because you're looking to heat the Rock and now you have heat after this insulated point that's not like plugged into the wall, it's not electricity, just a hot Rock, so I would recommend using that now, let's get into it.

Hydration bearded dragons are not these animals that are average because they don't need water because they come from the desert, they can occur in very, very arid, desert-like conditions, but they are more of a semi-scrub to grassland species. that can be found. In Woodlands we find scrublands, grasslands, really arid sand dunes, but their burrows have between 80 and 100 humidity. They can find areas with high humidity microclimates under clumps of grass in the morning, when there is a Jew everywhere and everything is dripping with water. drink from that, there are plenty of opportunities to hydrate for these little dragons in the wild and then rain and flooding happens and there are puddles, that's why when the dragonsBearded dragons can use it to float and avoid flooding, so they won't necessarily be free of all moisture and water content in the wild, so to make sure your bearded dragon is hydrated in captivity, you'll get plenty of it by eating their vegetables and will hydrate that way, esp.

If you've gone weed picking and washed it and then it's really wet, it can be a great way to hydrate your bearded dragon, but also provide it with a bowl of water, we're not in the 1990s anymore, there are a lot of tropes about not do it. provide a bottle of water because the humidity rises too much, don't worry, if there is too much humidity it is because there is not enough ventilation, humidity 50 to 60. I really wouldn't worry a little, a little dragon goes down, it can go down. in a burrow of like 100 humidity, in the long term that could cause some respiratory problems, but it's not the humidity, of course, the respiratory problems, it's the bacterial proliferation in moist, warm, dark areas where bacteria enter their airways. system and because they are an infection, it is not the water content, it is the cleanliness of the environment and that comes into cleaning, if you take everything out once a month, disinfect the area and place a fresh substrate, then ideally you will be It's okay, if you have adequate ventilation that allows excess moisture to be removed whenever you want, then it will be fine.

I wouldn't worry about having a water bottle, it's 2023, a water container, even if you never see them use them. It's there as a last resort if you're feeling a little dehydrated and that's how you protect yourself from impacts and things like that. The reason most of those people suffered impacts is because they kept it in the driest, most arid conditions possible without a bowl of water and then putting sand in it, things like and there's just a recipe for disaster. What's really strange is that there's this trope of not providing a water bowl, but then at the end of the week you try to bathe the bearded dragon to rehydrate it. so dehydrate him all week and then one day a week give him a bath to try to get him to drink water or you can just leave him every day or in the water bowl and let that bearded dragon regulate his hydration, it's common sense no Make sure to bathe him once we hydrate him the only time that is good is if the warm water stimulates the bearded dragon to defecate early and if you wanted to defecate because you are trying to get a fecal sample for something early or if there is some other reason why that you want them to take them down early other than you really don't need to do it now, the way bearded dragons work is that their feces is stored in the colon, now the colon is designed to extract as much moisture as possible. from that area as possible if you get them to defecate early then they will defecate from that colon too soon and I didn't have that time to absorb all that moisture content and there may be some nutrients and some minerals and things that haven't been absorbed that have caused you to leave. the body prematurely by doing that.

There is also a myth that bearded dragons can absorb water through their cloaca. Now that's not true. People say to bathe them because they absorb water into the sewer. In the case, Beady's veterinarian showed that by putting this liquid in a bath for some dragon that appears on an x-ray and then putting the bearded dragon in this bath, now the bearded dragon drank and after half an hour or so I mean, I really had to build a dragon. You can see this liquid in the throat in the stomach. Nothing in the cloaca, so by doing that he showed that the cloaca does not absorb water, that's a myth, that's not the case, don't worry about it now.

The other thing with bearded dragons is that in the winter they hibernate, so in the winter they go through a period of dormancy and sleep and then in the spring they emerge and in the summer they go into another type of they are semi-dormant but they don't sleep all the time without being called much and they will go away in a difficult situation because in nature it is very hot, they stay in the shade and will enjoy the temperatures very early in the morning. They are quite low and at night they avoid the peak of the sun, so in the summer you may find that the Bitter Dragon is not sunbathing and is as active as usual, that is normal, that is what they do in summers in nature.

There is the other myth that people in the northern hemisphere think that this behavior in the summer is because they are remembering that this year it would be winter in Australia and they are trying to hibernate because they remember their roots, that is not the case, it is just that . when it's hot in the summer, that's what they do, so it's not because they're trying to brew, because they remember there would have been this time of year in Australia when the hemispheres change seasonally, that's not the case, it's just that in summer. They also go through a period of inactivity so spring and fall is when you get the most activity out of them and then in the winter you can take a break and then in the summer they also become semi semi semi oh my gosh they may not eat . it depends on the temperatures it depends on when there's a heatwave in your country in the UK, especially then you'll find a bit of inactivity and just kind of like you're sitting somewhere, lying around.

I admit I'm going pretty fast for you. There's a lot, a lot of bitter Dragon knowledge up here that I'm just regurgitating for you, and more often than not, I had clients staring at me, but as I spoke, I hope this video does. it will keep you coming back over and over again so just go through it all and really digest it and really understand it and then bearded dragons are incredibly intelligent animals that dream and think that they plan, they are incredibly intelligent animals and they can be trained, they can be trained to remember, They can be stationed, they can be trained, they can be trained to targets, these are intelligent animals that are not stupid like everyone thinks they are.

There is a meme going around where some dragons have nothing between their ears, but they are very, very intelligent, they have very intelligent brains, similar to those of birds, because birds are also reptiles, but if you work with them, they are very, very intelligent the only time they are dumb is when they are kept on the road without stimulation and they have to sit there for 10 years in a small confined space and just sit like that of course you are not going to have a very intelligent animal whose brain has been exercised and asked to think and challenged.

To solve the problem, adult bearded dragons do not need to eat a lot and I mean this honestly, it is all about portion control, so you can feed a female dragon three days a week with insects and the rest with vegetation, and then two days a week. don't feel anything, just let them sit and digest and pass things in the wild, they wouldn't get food every day, that's fine, the males could be fed with less dollars, they could feed insects twice a week and there could be a handful of insects around. time. time four five eight seven around that kind of sweet spot the number of bugs depending on the type of bug the size of the bug age of the bug you get the idea age of the size a little bit of the Dragon is all there's a little bit of intuition here but keep in mind Be careful not to throw a lot of food at these dragons and make them obese.

Now what you want is a nice tummy tuck so that when the bearded dragon stands up, the belly doesn't sag touching the ground, that could be the case if after you. I like to feed them and they have a lot of food in their bellies, but if they haven't been fed they shouldn't be drooping on the ground, the base of their tail should be nice and round but not deflated. They shouldn't really be fat when they have rolls like parts of their arms or around like their neck, they are too fat, so some dragons are supposed to be thin, they are supposed to be agile, they are supposed to be thin. being in a tree, seeing a snake coming, falling to the ground and running, these animals are not meant to be fat so there is a lot of vet data showing that around 250 for females they like between 275 and 300 grams.

It was where most of the top female dragons were 315 I think it was or 350 was what they were gathered at, it could have even been 275. You'll have to look that up and Beady those are the stats but bearded dragons don't need to be 500 . grams 600 grams not even 400 grams, you may have a very large amount, but I hope that large amount is 350 375, you can look at the body condition, it doesn't have to be these really fat chubby animals, what we are doing . If they're making them fat, we're causing problems in their internal visceral organs, who think there's bloated fat on the outside of an animal like a reptile, so you can imagine how much visceral fat is there and you don't want to.

If you don't fatten them up, you will shorten their life expectancy. You want them thin, active, eating a lot of vegetation. Fewer insects in the female. If yours sets, then you know you feel too much and need to reduce it in the male. if he's fat and you can tell if he's fat then you need to cut him down, a lot of people would just feed him too much and say, oh but he won't eat bad because he'll only eat vegetables, he won't eat vegetables. or just eats bugs, that's because you're giving in, it takes some tough love.

I think I record for an hour now, it's just me regurgitating my knowledge to first-time Guardians and what they can expect, um, if we want more. detailed video let me know I could even do a live stream uh I could do a live stream dedicated to the bearded dragon where people can chat and ask questions and we can give really detailed answers to people individually yeah so we could do it, I hope. Some of this is valuable to you. I know I've been talking for an hour. I just wanted to take everything that's here and give it to you.

There are probably some topics that I have forgotten to touch on. but it's already an hour away, so I think we'll cut it short. If anyone has any questions, please leave them in the comment and I will address those comments directly and help you in the future. If anyone wants help. I'm here to help you and I'm here to help your animals so leave comments don't be afraid I will help you if this is the type of content you like and you want help feel free to subscribe and join us. this journey of using science to better support animals and see you in the next video