Babysitting a Bearded Dragon

Jun 25, 2017
6 min read

🙂Meet young Buddy✌🏻

This is the story of the weekend I babysat my co-worker's bearded dragon Buddy.

Who is Buddy? Buddy is my co-worker Lee's bearded dragon. He has a very wide tummy and I found out today that he loves dubia roaches. Im taking care of him this weekend and I told myself I should blog about it see the behavioral traits dragons show when taken out their regular environment and put into a different one. To start this blog off, lets talk about the first night I got to take him home. Bringing Buddy home Me and my coworker work a 2nd shift job so we get off at 1:30 in the morning. I followed Lee to her house and brought Buddy home with me in a small 20 gallon tank with two tree log branches. She also gave me a large heat lamp that was a bit too big for the small cage so I switched it with the smaller lamp I use for my roaches. She keeps Buddy in a large 60 gallon tank. Buddy is roughly 7 inches long and I would have to say he is about 2 to 3 months old. His stomach is about 3 inches wide though. In the picture you can see he has very small limbs and I'm not sure why that is. I took Buddy home with me around 1:45 to 2:00 and when I brought him inside Mango and Copper were asleep. When I started setting up his tank in front of Mango and Coppper's, Mango woke up and started flipping out. His beard got night black and he was bobbing his head like no other. Buddy was unfazed by Mango but Mango was not having it. I do believe bearded dragons can tell what sex each other are even as babies because the way he acted towards Buddy v.s. Copper is completely different. He tried to rip Buddy a new one when I let them meet. Basically Buddy was calm when I got ready for bed around 2:30. Now let me remind you, it was 2:30 in the morning and this dragon was wide awake. Mango would have went back to sleep when he woke up if he wouldn't have noticed Buddy in the same space as him. I layed in bed a little after 3 and I watched Buddy's behavior for a while until I got tired. He was gaping his mouth open constantly under the heat lamp which makes me feel like he was getting very warm from the lamp because the tank was so small and the heat was so close to him. After a while of him gaping his mouth and just chilling, Mango started to get insanely upset. I mean he was running around his cage charging at his glass trying to get to Buddy. It was ridiculous. Let me remind you Copper is asleep through ALL of this. None of the noise or anything fazed him he stayed asleep. After I realized Mango wasn't going back to sleep, I threw a blanket over his cage causing him to become tired of trying to get out and falling asleep again. Buddy was still awake and around 4:30 he started having bad diarrhea. I mean there wasn't anything solid about that poo at all and it smelt horrible. I cleaned out the paper towels he was on and put fresh ones down. I wanted to give him a bath because I didn't want him to be nasty and dirty and just in case he wasn't fully hydrated, I figure it would help that too. Well I got Buddy a bath ready and he did not like it at all. He literally jumped out of my 12 inch high sink and tried to run across my countertop. I'm talking, Mango is big but Ive never seen him catch air like this little guy did. When I calmed Buddy down I got him to drink a tiny bit of water before he started freaking again. After I took him out of the bath I fed him some roaches and he ate those things like he hadn't ate in days. My friend Lee told me she feeds him a lot of greens and lot of worms. I put two and two together and realized thats why his stomach is so bloated. His diet probably consist of iceberg lettuce and mealworms or superworms and if you know anything about bearded dragons, those are not the best staple foods for them at all. Learning about him what I have so far, I'm going to makes sure to tell my coworker to feed him more protein like crickets and roaches and to dust them with calcium as well. I also think she needs a better UVB bulb as well because it seems to me that the one he has now is causing him bad stomach troubles. After I fed Buddy a couple roaches I made my way to bed and got maybe 30 minutes of sleep before Buddy began clawing at his glass like no other. It was around 5:30 to 6:00 a.m. when I had had enough. I put a blanket down in a laundry basket and laid him in it hoping he would fall asleep. I laid down and he was silent for a few moments before he climbed the blanket and jumped out. After this I gave up, put him back in his tank and tried to fall asleep. I think I finally got to where I could ignore the clawing and I fell asleep around 8 or 8:30 that morning, then I was woken up back at noon to the same clawing still constantly happening in my ear. After that I got out of bed and yelled "fine Buddy you win! I give up" and I got up and moved his cage into the kitchen away from Mango and Copper and out of my room. Hopefully tonight's sleep will be much quieter and he will have calmed down a bit. After I got up around 12:30 and started taking care of Mango and Copper, I noticed how black Mango's beard still was. I took Buddy and put him in the kitchen floor then I brought Mango in there and set him down about 5 feet away from Buddy. It didn't take Mango 10 seconds before he realized Buddy was near him. He slammed his hand down, bobbed his head a few times, then charged at Buddy like he wanted to murder him. I believe that was his intention. Before work, Buddy had diarrhea again and I had to clean it up once more. I fed him some collards before I went to work and he ate every piece of them. I was impressed at how much he ate. He also ate some freeze dried mealworms I left in his tank. Hopefully tonight will be easier and hopefully letting him sit at the house all day has gotten Buddy used to his surrounding for now. Day 2 Okay so Buddy craps a lot. That, we now know. Iv'e had to change paper towels in his tank a good few times because for some reason, Buddy's system just doesn't seem to be working right. He seems to be having diarrhea constantly and I have fed him a decent amount of roaches since I brought him home. I believe it could be sickness from stress or it may be because of poor UVB lighting. Lee has given me a fluorescent bulb in a deep dome but I'm not sure if it is producing the UVB he needs to digest food properly. It could be a lot of things. When I take him back I'm going to take note of what lighting he has and help my coworker by explaining to her what proper lighting he needs to stay healthy.

Day 3, 4, and 5

Buddy was very bright eyed and hungry throughout the last couple days he stayed with me. I allowed him and Mango to meet each and they did not seem to want to be friendly. I was not suprised though. They weren't able to touch each other but I'm sure they wanted to. Buddy ate plenty of roaches the last couple days and his bowl movements got better. I sold my coworker a few decor items to give him more to climb on and from what she has told me, he is doing wonderful. He has started shedding and eats lots of greens again now that he is back home.