Easy Peasy Guide To Breeding Bearded Dragons

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Gee, did we say easy peasy!

Well, you will realize as soon as you are into it that breeding bearded dragons is much easier than saying the alphabets! It is as easy as housing a male and a female together in a vivarium and voila!

But you may need to break the bank!

No, not kidding, for heaven’s sake!!

If you are serious about breeding Beardies, let us forewarn you that not only is there very less money in breeding them, you will spend a considerable sum of money in feeding them while they are at it and when they hatch to housing them in separate vivarium till about six weeks old which is the time that they are ready to be out on the block. 

Do you intend to breed exclusive and colorful morphs?

The money is there and in hoards!

In the early 1980s and 90s, American breeders of bearded dragons were more concentrated on how to morph colorful Beardies. Unfortunately, they were not so much on how to make their stronger. The result was that we had bearded dragons in ever so colorful hues and shades, metallic to translucent but those that had a reduced life cycle.

In Europe, on the contrary, breeders, especially in Germany, spent a considerable amount of time and energy breeding hardier breeds of Pogonas or these fabulous reptiles for their pet trade, and they had a fantastic life cycle longer than what they enjoy in the wild even.

The difference between them is no longer apparent for the simple reason that today so much inbreeding has happened between the American and the European morphs that we have the beautifully colored as much as the strong hardier breed in the markets now. 

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Coming back to the point, are you seriously considering breeding them?

If your answer is yes, this guide will also give you a sneak peek into their inherent nature and what you must expect when you have them with you for the sole purpose of breeding you. Of course, they make fantastic pets, and you will never feel like you need any more company than them!

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Beardies are solitary creatures, and they defend their territories very well:

In the wild, bearded dragons keep to themselves. Male and female Beardies may have courtship drama and all, but once they mate, they generally keep to themselves. The liberated female beardie will move away and lay her eggs in someplace, bury them with soil, and conveniently forget about them. 

Needless to say, that the little young hatchlings, when they come alive off the egg, have no one but themselves to fend and defend themselves. A very small number of hatchlings will actually make themselves through to adulthood. Some of them die out of starvation or are eaten up by bigger reptile predators.

The bearded dragons are very territorial, and they are forever ready for a duel if there is ever a competition for their territory. Women are generally docile, but there are exceptions when women are equally fierce like their male counterparts. 

The Beardies have their own gestures and sign language, and a breeder who is planning to breed them in captivity may do good to examine closely and understand the intercommunication skills that they share amongst them.

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Coming to the breeding set up:

Vivarium will be needed to be set up because they closely mimic the natural environment of the lizards. The bearded dragons need to absorb enough sunlight to be able to synthesize calcium and vitamins in their diet. Therefore heat, lighting, and décor will have to resemble the habitat that they originate from closely. UV light source is a sine quo non for the vivarium. 

You will need to invest in as many numbers of enclosures as the number of bearded dragons you intend to house!

Don’t ever make the mistake of housing two or more bearded dragons together! No! You will find one of them mauled to death in the first instance only. They are dominating creatures, and they cannot tolerate intrusions in their personal sphere, albeit even one of their own!

Two males together are a definite no-no!

Two females may do well together; still, there is no good guarantee. You must be able to separate them in the first instance. This is to say that you must be prepared with a spare vivarium where you can shift the other Pogona to at the very first signs of mistrust. 

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So, say that the Beardies mated and now the female is ready to lay eggs:

You will find she Bearded Dragon very lethargic when she is carrying and about to deliver. The gravid female may be sleeping most of the time and spend very few active moments in an hour. You will also find her stomach bulging with the eggs inside it. Once she is ready to lay the eggs, she will begin digging. You could provide her a plastic container with some sand where she can lay her eggs

Once she lays the eggs, she will bury them in the sand and walk out forgetfully never to come back again to check for them. Now the onus is on you to house all the hatchlings individually in separate vivarium till they are big enough to be sold. 

Housing a male and a female can be equally terrible. The male is sexually very active, and they reach puberty much earlier than the females. Mating with a premature female and repeatedly can put a lot of stress on the female, considerably shortening her lifespan. 

You must take care while breeding that you do not procure hatchlings from the same cluster:

When you are buying a pair to breed, you must make sure that they do not belong to the same cluster, or else they are a brother and sister pair. When you are buying an unrelated pair, you must make sure that you are buying one male and female. This is a tricky part because the gender difference is not too apparent until they are of considerable size and at least six months in age. 

Sometimes, what you think is a female bearded dragon is actually a male beardie with late-developing femoral and Hemi penal bulges. And we already warned you what happens if per chance you have to house two male bearded dragons together!

The bottom line is that in case you have fallen in love hopelessly with these cute little Beardies, so much that you want to be instrumental in their proliferation stop short and ask yourself if you are ready for this mentally and financially. Only if you have no doubts that you will pull this along, go for it! We are, of course, cheering you here!!

Written by: Anna Liutko


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