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beardie owners

P

pwargcm

wrong way
i know females can lay eggs even without breeding, and thus is my concern. my girl is under a year old but very good sized. today weighed 609g and thats with losing a couple grams.

my concern is shes slowing down on her eating, she is not fat in any sense of obese but is beardie fat. she has always dug up a lil nest every few days to sleep in and never dug like she has been doing. shes on aspen and today she dug and kept digging at her melamime floor as if she kept wanting to dig. so this digging and slowing down in eating is having me wondering if she has some eggs.

is it possible for a beardie not even a year old yet to lay eggs? or is she just slowing down eating bugs because shes more near her adult size. she still eats the same amount of greens she normally would which is a bowl or more a day. so thats not concerning me. but today she only ate 3 supers and show no interest in roaches, not even a smaller nymph. thanks for any help on this subject as i know some of you have been through this before.
 
Isabel was 600 plus when she started laying. Digging and loss of appetite were big clues...I finally had to make her a lay box for the last two (of three) clutches- a giant garbage can with a foot and a half of damp peat in it. She layed right away. You can try palpating for eggs when she is really relaxed, but they are hard to feel. hard to distinguish from everything else in there.
 
ok. how old was she when she did this? i just bought a 50 lb bag of organic soil to use as a lay box substrate. i am gonna give her one when shes a bit plumper. i tried palpating but didnt feel anything. my friends old boss used to breed some and he just texted me after asking him. and he said to palpate her when shes in a bath. that way shes relaxed and you can feel them easier. which makes sense i guess. thanks for you reply nanci. i was hoping you would reply cause i knew you went through this not to long ago. just couldnt find the thread.
 
They can stop eating up to four days before they lay....

if she is digging she wants to lay NOW lol

get a rubbermaid tub and fill it with potting soil (no fertilizer) and put her in there... they like to lay eggs 18inches or so down..thats why they dig in the cage but try not to lay them there...not deep enough.

Good luck, I've seen lots of beardies under a year old have small clutches (10 or so)
 
yeah. shes going in a lay box tomorrow after i try to feed her. i dont wanna do it when shes sleeping tonight. she stopped digging and just basked the rest of the day. so i know its gonna be soon. thanks for the help. i woulda asked at bd.org but when i ask questions there people seem really smug in their answers and not really like they wanna help, or that im a lil kid and get a lil kid answer. here at cs its so much more laid back with many more helpful people.
 
another thing. do i leave her in the lay box until she lays or do i take her out if shes not digging or showing any interest in laying?
 
pwargcm said:
another thing. do i leave her in the lay box until she lays or do i take her out if shes not digging or showing any interest in laying?
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Personally....I would put her in tonight...if she is digging, she doesn't care that its night time....its like having a human baby in the middle of the night...if the contractions are there...well they are there!!! You can mount a small heat lamp on the tub (or trashcan like the other poster mentioned, which I think is a superior idea btw!) and then leave her in there.

She is not going to eat and a healthy beardy can go days without food no issue....I find that most females lay overnight anyways. If she stays in the cage and can't "hold" them any longer she will lay them everywhere in the cage, and its kinda stressful for them as they have a sequence of digging and burying them that they want to do.

Hope that helps. :)
 
Maybe I'm missing something. But can't you put the laybox IN the enclosure? That way, she would have the option of leaving it if she isn't prepared to lay, and you don't have to worry about watching her.
 
Floof said:
Maybe I'm missing something. But can't you put the laybox IN the enclosure? That way, she would have the option of leaving it if she isn't prepared to lay, and you don't have to worry about watching her.
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that would have to be a pretty large enclosure!
 
Hm, maybe I'm too used to legless things that DON'T dig. ;)

I'm serious, though.. Maybe it wouldn't be as deep as she would like, but it might be worth a shot, and then he doesn't have to stress over it. If it doesn't work, it's not too late to do a lay box separate from the enclosure. :shrugs:

Then again, I have little experience with beardies. Even less with lizards in general. And absolutely zero with female lizards... So I wouldn't be surprised if my advice is useless. I figured it was better to suggest it than to just forget it, though... =)
 
Floof said:
Hm, maybe I'm too used to legless things that DON'T dig. ;)

I'm serious, though.. Maybe it wouldn't be as deep as she would like, but it might be worth a shot, and then he doesn't have to stress over it. If it doesn't work, it's not too late to do a lay box separate from the enclosure. :shrugs:

Then again, I have little experience with beardies. Even less with lizards in general. And absolutely zero with female lizards... So I wouldn't be surprised if my advice is useless. I figured it was better to suggest it than to just forget it, though... =)
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Lol , yeah snake lay boxes are so easy compared to beardies...

If the beardie can't get deep enough (about 18") she wont turn around and lay the eggs...she will just keep trying to dig deeper thinking she hit a hard patch...its kinda sad to watch. :(

I have seen lay boxes as shallow as 12" work, but im sure the animal stresses quite a bit before laying. :)
 
I see! Thanks for the insight. I had no clue Beardies would be so picky about something so simple as a lay box... Lol! =)
 
Yeah, my thread has such a catchy title!! http://tinyurl.com/ktcwou

Isabel is four this summer. This is the first year she's pulled this. She laid the second and third clutches MUCH faster after she got her lay box. I agree- if she is digging, she wants to lay now, but will hold off as long as possible until she finds a place to her liking. She would NOT lay in a turkey pan filled with digging mix in her viv- just made a huge mess and tried to dig through the bottom of the pan.

The vet suggested I cut her light hours back to eight hours a day (she was on twelve) an dthis seems to have stopped her for this season. I had her like that for about a month, and now have her back up to ten hours, and so far, so good. It was not possible for me to lower her temps- my AC only cools to 80 on the best days.

Oh, if your girl flattens out like a pancake to bask, you can generally palpate pretty well, then. Isabel doesn't mind at all. But it's hard to tell the eggs apart from her colon, a big ball of urates, etc.
 
i put her in it last night and she just fell asleep. i had a red bulb over it just to keep it around 75. she dug nothing, and i just took her out because she was just jumping around trying to get out but still didnt dig. i took her out and she ate 5 worms and a roach and just went up to bask. i palpated her 3 seperate times. once in her bath so she didnt get her cage all dirty, once when i was drying her. and once after she ate. i feel nothing. so maybe shes just slowing down on bug eating and was just digging for the heck of it last night. if she digs today shes going back in the box again. but so far nothing is going on except the life of a beardie basking. itd be great if she didnt have eggs cause i dont want anything to go wrong. i do have a male and they will breed after theyre 2 years old. theyre both basically the same age. so as for right now she was just trying to make me worry i guess. thanks for all the help guys.
 
When Isabel started digging, without a laybox, she dug so much she wore off her front nails...Oh, and when (if) you put her in the lay box, and she does lay, you know she's done because she covers the nest hole up! It can be difficult to find, and quite extensive.
 
yeah, right now shes teasing me. shes just sitting there. at her whole bowl of greens already. so shes back to eating. normally. and ill see if shes digging later.
 
another option is that your days are getting shorter/colder and shes digging to try and hibernate (its too soon) if thats the case, simply bumping up the heat will wake her up.

Aim for a hot spot at least 90 in the lay box...a beardie at 75 wont be able to do much...too cold..
 
well i did just move. so she might think its time. she moved from a spare room in our old house that was always warm. around 80 during the day and not much colder at night. now shes in a basement that is around 65-70. so her nights are getting much colder. do you think she thinks its time to start getting a den ready? and is just slowing down.
 
What kind of lights and heat do you have on her? Does she still have her basking spot? If it's getting down to 65 at night, you might want to put a small ceramic heater on her at night. Isabel has the big heat bulb/full spectrum light that keeps her basking area 105 during the day, and is off at night. Two fluorescent UVBs that are on during the day, off at night. One ceramic heater (CHE) that is on during the night when the house temp is lower than 70- until she is in brumation, then she is in her hide under a blankie with no lights. She normally has her lights on 12 on, 12 off during the summer, and I cut this back gradually in the fall, like November, until she is at 8 or 10 on, and then she brumates herself. I turn the heat off AFTER she has brumated on her own.
 
shes got a normal basking bulb that gets her basking to 110 at the highest point but she doesnt hang out there much. and got a 48 inch uvb flourescent tube. same as my males cage. i just got a che today after reading that. so im gonna try and keep her cage warmer at night now. shes 12 hours on off now. with a timer. so its not changed at all. maybe its just the cold. hopefully this che will do the trick now.
 
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