Reply To: Princess Puff Sleeping Through Winter

[XionUAV]

Truthfully most of this type of information is all over You Tube but there are also some people who are uniformed and give bad advice.

The first and most important fact about Beardies is they are native to the hot and super dry and arid outbacks of Australia. They also rarely drink standing water. They usually drink only if it’s dripping off their nose (as if it was raining), off of plants or usually just the moisture from food is enough.

Beardies are very susceptible to respiratory infection caused by air that’s too humid. When my daughter was younger she was told to mist her dragon often. So she did. A few months later it was really struggling to breathe. She took it to the vet who told her it had developed a respiratory infection very likely due to too much humidity. So water bowls and misting in general offer no positive health benefits to a Bearded Dragon and can actually harm them in the long term. Now, misting a shedding dragon can help dry up the shed to come off easier but even then it’s better to bath the dragon, as in letting it soak in warm water for at least 10 minutes and longer if possible so the skin gets thoroughly saturated. Puff is only good for about 10 minutes then she really wants out.

The prevailing scientific theory about hydration during brumation is that in the wild a dragon is usually in contact with the ground where a small amount of moisture is naturally absorbed into the skin keeping the dragon hydrated. Obviously this can’t happen in a terrarium so occasionally a captive dragon in brumation should be soaked in warm water to keep it hydrated. How often is kind of a guessing thing but it seems most recommend anywhere from a week to maybe two week intervals. I usually bath Puff about every 10 days or so. Don’t see any point in bothering her more than necessary when she’s trying to expend as little energy as possible.

After soaking and warming up, sometimes our Puff will want a few bites to eat but many times she won’t. Having too much food in the stomach and digestive system while sleeping for months and months would not be a good thing because it could rot so she only eats what she thinks she needs. Recently I saw an irritating video where a young woman trying to be helpful dumped a bunch of crickets in with a completely lethargic brumating dragon. The poor dragon barely had its eyes open and the crickets were running all over it. Wanted to rescue the poor thing.

Then I saw a video where an experienced reptile breeder went into a private pet store where he saw water bowls in with the baby bearded dragons. He told the owner that the water would make the air in the terrarium humid which could cause health issues for the dragons. He said he knew that but apparently some animal rights people had come into the store, saw there was no water in the terrariums, complained to some official agency that the store owner was mistreating the reptiles by not providing them with water so the agency threatened to fine him if he didn’t put water bowls in the cages. One of the stupidest things I’ve every heard.

Here’s Puff in her spa towel drying off before she basks for a while then goes back to sleep.

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