My dragon laid eggs yesterday!

[free5ty1e]

Took one of the bearded dragons to my land yesterday, where my pops and I are drilling our well. Put her in the harness and hitched it to some chain so she had plenty of sun and shade to choose from. She started furiously digging, and we went about our business for several hours.

When we were getting ready to pack it up for the day, and went over to check on the dragon again, she had finally stopped digging and had begun laying eggs! She laid like 15+.... and I was actually there to witness the last 8 or so. Snapped some photos with my camera and took a video or two.

We gently gathered the eggs into a small bowl and brought them back to the hotel, and sat them on the TV for warmth overnight. Now I've got to look up the incubation temperature and set up a place for them.

Anyone have experience with this?

[dzx]

That's pretty cool. I'm not sure what incubation temp is since they are generally buried in the sand it looks like.

[Tleg93]

That's cool. We should call you the Dragontamer or Dragonbreeder now (j/k).

[LegacyPunk]

Pfff I thought you had a REAL dragon. Thats cool, reptiles are some cool creatures, my friend was/is obsessed with chameleons.

[snowboarded]

I saw Iguanas and little lizards all over Florida, I wanted to catch one but didn't get the chance. How expensive is it to keep one? Like price of cage and food and whatnot.

[206er]

way cool! what does she eat, and appears to be about 2' long? what is she like personality wise? ive just never really seen these is all.
maybe you can keep a few and make some scratch by selling off the rest of the hatchlings?
I'm sure that as with most other things NV has some prety lax laws regarding exotic animal dealers.

[free5ty1e]

Well, it looks like bearded dragons can lay eggs without mating... and they're infertile. How about that? It's good to know that, once I've gotten things together here and have some room, I can let them breed and probably make some decent cash. The babies went for $40-$70 each down in Orlando, depending on the season and pet store. I want a few more dragons (I've got 4, 2 males & 2 females) but with those kinds of egg numbers I can definately sell some.

Anyway, I guess it's tough to tell in that photo, but she's 1' long including tail. Each of my dragons has a unique personality, they're really cool pets. As babies they eat pinhead crickets, then normal crickets and veggies, right now mine eat dry food, fruits, and veggies with the occasional superworm as a treat.

Keeping a bearded dragon is pretty easy, and unlike iguanas (of which I've had three) you don't have to train them to be cool around humans. They just are. Once they're like a year old or so the males need separate cages. 10-gallon aquariums work just fine, although I've got a larger cage and usually let a few of them run free around the hotel room while I work. They are hilarious. The females will bob slowly and wave their hands at the males, who will bob fast and stomp their feet. The males are constantly trying to fight.

I've got some video clips of them in action somewhere; if someone wants to host one or two of them I'll put them up here. (probably 5MB apiece MPG files, although I can encode them with XVid and make some much smaller AVIs)

[evolutionmovement]

What do the eggs taste like? I bet they go well with bacon.

[BAC5.2]

Your sick Steve.

[evolutionmovement]

They're not fertilized. Why is that more disgusting than chicken eggs?

[BAC5.2]

Oh my bad, I missed that part. Sorry Steve

[free5ty1e]

lol... well I suppose they are bite-size. Fun-size?

Sorry Steve, I already got rid of them. They didn't look too appetizing anyway.

[evolutionmovement]

I wouldn't eat them either. I just find it amusing the things we accept as edible and the things we don't. I took a Chinese guy to a Jewish deli and he decided to go to Wendy's after seeing the cow's tongue. He has no problem eating in China town with gutted animals hanging in the windows and some of the nasty stuff they eat. I just found that to be funny.

[free5ty1e]

Yeah, true; every culture has it's own perceptions of what's good to eat and what's disgusting.

I guess this is why you don't see more Chinese people on Fear Factor gulping down bugs.

[monty's legacy]

cool man, gotta love it when they just drop like that. One thing to be worried about is her calcium levels after they lay. They can drop to dangerous levels if you don't supplement her more than usual.

[free5ty1e]

Huh, she didn't seem any worse for wear.... oh and did I mention she laid more eggs (15?) about a month ago? And these look like they're developing....

[monty's legacy]

Huh, she didn't seem any worse for wear.... oh and did I mention she laid more eggs (15?) about a month ago? And these look like they're developing....

Lots of times they can get Metabolic Bone Disease (MBD) and the signs don't show up right away. It really depends on how good your diet is, your lighting, but overall you are better off giving her some sort of extra supplement. Good luck with the baby dragons though, oh and when you have questions that are really indepth, don't ask a pet store worker, some know their stuff most don't. I worked at pet stores for 8 years and saw so many people get the wrong information, vets are the best source.

[free5ty1e]

She seems to be fine, as a matter of fact she's digging a new hole right now... presumably to lay another clutch of eggs. If even a fraction of these eggs hatch I'm gonna have a lot of dragons on my hands.

Thanks for the warning though, I've got some calcium supplement somewheres around here.