Hi,
I have a young beardie, Kirby, who's approximately 10 months old and has been with me since three months. (I don't know exactly when she hatched. I'm also not sure of her gender, I just prefer to call her something other than "it".) It's nothing I can put my finger on, but I feel like there might be something wrong. She's my first beardie, however, so I wanted to run it by the more experienced beardie keepers.
First things first. She has a UV 10.0 fluoro tube that's about six months old and a basking spot that gives her a range of temperatures from about 39 to 45 degrees. She can get within 10 centimetres of both lights. I take her out for at least half an hour of natural sunlight every week, and usually she gets more. The enclosure is 117cm wide, 60 cm deep and 39 cm high. About a third of that is a lightless, heatless compartment (the enclosure came that way - I intend to change that). The substrate is currently newspaper (I intend to change that too).
The beardie herself is approximately 49 cm long from tail tip to snout and 440 grams. She grew very quickly between three months and eight months, and I began to taper her wood cockroaches off at about six to seven months. She now has woodies once a week and is provided salad every day. Salad usually includes chopped bok choy, pak choy or endives, grated squash and grated butternut pumpkin. She gets calcium supplements every third day and vitamin supplements once a week. I mist her every third day or so. She doesn't like being put in the shower or in water so I do that rarely.
Now to possible problems. She hasn't been much of a salad eater since the beginning. She will eat greens but picks around anything else. She doesn't even touch strawberry or hibiscus flowers. I took that as normal for a three-month-old, but she seems to be getting worse. She doesn't touch her salad at all some days and eats only a small amount when she does. She does eat woodies though, when offered. Whenever I try to vary the ingredients of her salad, she seems to get even less interested in eating it, so for now I'm sticking to what she knows.
At the risk of incurring the wrath of Pythoninfinite
, I have to describe her bowel movements, or lack thereof. They were pretty regular and soon after meals to start with, but last time I gave her woodies it took her seven days to pass them. Because I'm under the impression that beardies should poop regularly to prevent rot in the stomach, I'm a little worried about that.
She also sleeps more and seems less active overall, although of course that could be more to do with reaching adulthood than any health problem. She spends a lot of time sitting in the same place. The lightless compartment might be a problem. She sometimes goes in there in the late afternoon; because she doesn't notice the lights coming on in the morning, she ends up having an impromptu sleep in. Having said that, she does occasionally scrabble at the glass and butt at it with her nose, which doesn't stop until I let her out for a run around the apartment.
What do people think?
Thanks,
Ren
I have a young beardie, Kirby, who's approximately 10 months old and has been with me since three months. (I don't know exactly when she hatched. I'm also not sure of her gender, I just prefer to call her something other than "it".) It's nothing I can put my finger on, but I feel like there might be something wrong. She's my first beardie, however, so I wanted to run it by the more experienced beardie keepers.
First things first. She has a UV 10.0 fluoro tube that's about six months old and a basking spot that gives her a range of temperatures from about 39 to 45 degrees. She can get within 10 centimetres of both lights. I take her out for at least half an hour of natural sunlight every week, and usually she gets more. The enclosure is 117cm wide, 60 cm deep and 39 cm high. About a third of that is a lightless, heatless compartment (the enclosure came that way - I intend to change that). The substrate is currently newspaper (I intend to change that too).
The beardie herself is approximately 49 cm long from tail tip to snout and 440 grams. She grew very quickly between three months and eight months, and I began to taper her wood cockroaches off at about six to seven months. She now has woodies once a week and is provided salad every day. Salad usually includes chopped bok choy, pak choy or endives, grated squash and grated butternut pumpkin. She gets calcium supplements every third day and vitamin supplements once a week. I mist her every third day or so. She doesn't like being put in the shower or in water so I do that rarely.
Now to possible problems. She hasn't been much of a salad eater since the beginning. She will eat greens but picks around anything else. She doesn't even touch strawberry or hibiscus flowers. I took that as normal for a three-month-old, but she seems to be getting worse. She doesn't touch her salad at all some days and eats only a small amount when she does. She does eat woodies though, when offered. Whenever I try to vary the ingredients of her salad, she seems to get even less interested in eating it, so for now I'm sticking to what she knows.
At the risk of incurring the wrath of Pythoninfinite
, I have to describe her bowel movements, or lack thereof. They were pretty regular and soon after meals to start with, but last time I gave her woodies it took her seven days to pass them. Because I'm under the impression that beardies should poop regularly to prevent rot in the stomach, I'm a little worried about that.She also sleeps more and seems less active overall, although of course that could be more to do with reaching adulthood than any health problem. She spends a lot of time sitting in the same place. The lightless compartment might be a problem. She sometimes goes in there in the late afternoon; because she doesn't notice the lights coming on in the morning, she ends up having an impromptu sleep in. Having said that, she does occasionally scrabble at the glass and butt at it with her nose, which doesn't stop until I let her out for a run around the apartment.
What do people think?
Thanks,
Ren
