04/02/2024
WHAT ARE THE PROS & CONS OF OWNING A BEARDED DRAGON? HOW MUCH MAINTENANCE ARE THEY? & REALISTICALLY HOW MUCH DO THEY LET YOU HANDLE THEM?
I’ll start with the cons, most of which are to do with the cost and the space and equipment required to keep them correctly:
They need a decent sized enclosure - I wouldn’t keep a single animal in anything less than a 4′ x 2′ x 2′ and honestly that’s smaller than I’d WANT to be giving it. If I were going to buy a beardie right now, I’d need to be sorting out a new 5′ x 2′ x 2′ enclosure (and space to put it, where there’s not going to be anything on top of the warm end). They’re active animals and need space to move around, especially since captive animals are prone to getting fat. The space is also necessary to make sure they have the right temperature gradient and plenty of hiding places to get out of the light if they want to.
They require high-end UVB lighting, in the 12–14% range, changed regularly (because the tubes gradually stop giving out enough UVB). Compact UVB bulbs are not suitable; they aren’t high-output enough and don’t give enough of a spread of lighting. They need the UVB because, as desert animals, they require it to help them digest and use the calcium in their food to form strong bones; if they don’t have it, they will develop metabolic bone disease - basically the equivalent of “rickets” in humans - bendy, fragile bones that break easily, and that can include their jaw (making it hard for them to eat) and their spines / legs (making it hard or impossible for them to walk).
They require a fairly high-temperature basking area (a space the size of the dragon that is maintained at around 105–115F - 40–45C during the day) at one end of the enclosure, with an ambient warm end temperature around 90F/32C with a gradient down to the cooler end of the tank which may range from room temperature of 68F/20C to no more than 80F/26C - but in a small tank this is impossible to achieve (if your basking area is hot enough, your cool end may be too hot, and vice versa, if the cool end is the right temperature, your basking area may be too cold.)
To control all of that, you’ll need a thermostat that makes sure that your ambient temperatures are correct. A timer to switch the lights on at dawn and off at dusk wouldn’t be a bad idea either.
If you don’t like live insects… a beardie is not for you. They eat a LOT of live bugs as babies (and being able to chase crickets is important to keep them active and healthy) and although adults will eat fewer insects and more leafy green vegetables, they still need SOME insects. And, I hate to say it, but omnivorous lizard p**p *stinks*. You’ll want to get it out of the enclosure and flushed down the toilet as fast as you can.
No matter what a pet shop that wants to sell you two animals will tell you in order to sell you two animals … your bearded dragon does not want or need a bearded dragon friend and will not benefit from having one. A reputable reptile specialist won’t advise buying two, and a shop that does isn’t a reputable reptile specialist.
Best case scenario you wind up with two females who might be ok with each other (but hopefully neither of them decides to start cooking up a clutch of infertile eggs, because she may turn on her cagemate and start getting aggressive if she does).
Second-best case scenario, you wind up with two males who will be ok until they hit maturity and then they’ll start beating seven shades of sugar out of each other, biting at toes and tails and grabbing and shaking each other, and you’ll wind up giving away one of them or deciding that you actually don’t want to keep beardies at all.
Worst-case scenario, you get a pair, and when the male hits adulthood he’ll start beating seven shades of sugar out of the female until she’s big enough to breed, and then he’ll breed with her instead. Then you’ve got the “joys” of “what if Spyretta gets egg bound or has a calcium crash from all the eggshells she has to build or gets torn up by the male because beardie breeding isn’t gentle or turns on him and tears HIM up because she’s had enough” as well as “now I have thirty bearded dragon eggs and need an incubator fast because I couldn’t possibly freeze them to stop them ever hatching instead, but then two months later I have thirty more and two months later I have thirty more and I can’t possibly house, feed or afford 100 baby beardies a year and my local shops might take one or two or ten but that still leaves me with ninety baby beardies that are eating me out of house and home (if they’re not eating each other because you don’t have enough space to house them in small groups let alone by themselves)”
So, now that I’ve got all that down … the pros:
A pet beardie, kept correctly (and on its own, because we’ve already discussed why “friends” are a bad idea), is a very curious, interactive and friendly pet lizard. I haven’t actually kept one myself, mostly because I get my dose of “pet beardie” every weekend when we go to our local reptile shop - the young beardies at the shop are always interested in what’s going on outside their enclosure, and will approach the glass to find out what’s going on (and are you going to feed me?) And, because it’s our local shop and we’ve known them for a long while, I do occasionally get to get them out and handle them - never been nipped, and although the babies can be a little nervous about being picked up when they’re little, they do learn that we’re not going to hurt them.
They can be hand-fed (carefully - they do have teeth, but they tend to approach food tongue-first and then chew it up) on things like raspberries or bits of bell pepper or locusts, and this is great for building up trust.
They are a good size to handle, and they can be acclimated to coming out and clambering around on people, the couch, the floor, etc. If I were to own one, I’d be looking to handle them for about an hour a day, split into four fifteen-minute or so sessions (one in the morning, three throughout the evening). I’d be splitting it like that so that the beardie has time to go back and bask in their enclosure between handling, which ensures that they’re warm enough to digest and they’re getting their UVB exposure.
I would not be surprised if you could clicker-train one to run to a target or respond to its name - it’d just take a bit longer than doing the same thing with a cat or dog.
They do come in a wide variety of colours, and given how quickly and prolifically they breed those colour morphs may not be as expensive as the colour morphs in other species.
They’ve got a decent lifespan, about the same as a cat - expect to have yours for 15–20 years if you’re keeping it correctly.
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Pogona is a genus of reptiles containing six lizard species which are often known by the common name bearded dragons.
