I’m Holly Friedland, program director of the Midatlantic Reptile Show, and this is how to care
for a bearded dragon. Now we’re going to talk about how to choose if a bearded dragon is the
right pet for you. When you get one from a breeder, which is recommended, you’ll probably get
a baby, they’re about this big, and if you’re looking at adults or a baby, you wanna look and see
that their eyes are bright and not crusty, that their mouth doesn’t have anything stuck on it or
they’re not sitting with their mouth hanging open. That they have all their toes and their tail,
because a lot of times when they’re babies, they are kept in groups and they’ll mistake a
wiggling tail for food and they’ll bite each other tail off or toes off, so you wanna try to find one
that’s completely intact. Bearded dragons make good pets because they’re very docile, they’re
easy to handle, and they’re hardy. They live about 15 years, and so, if you get one as a pet, you
have to think about what you’re gonna do in the next 15 years and if it’s gonna fit in to your
lifestyle. You should also get a book and read about them and get the cage set up before you
actually get the animal. And just know what you’re getting into before you get it. And sexing
bearded dragons is pretty easy when they’re adults, underneath on their legs, they have bumps,
and if they have, they’re called femoral pores. And if they have these bumps, they’re generally a
male, also, when you hold them upside down, their tail will have a lump right here if they’re a
males. So if they have the femoral pores, which are right here, and the bulge in the tail, that’s
generally male. When they’re babies, it’s pretty much impossible to sex them. Bearded dragons
come from Australia, in warm areas of Australia, they live in areas where there are lot of places
for them to sit out in the sun and they like to sit almost vertically in the sun. When you keep a
bearded dragon, you need to keep it really warm, because, in Australia, where they come from,
they don’t hibernate, they stay warm all year round. They live in areas with sandy soil and their
color pretty much matches the habitat where they live. So they have a sandy color, like their
habitat. Bearded dragons are omnivores, and that means that they eat everything. They eat
vegetables, they eat berries, they eat insects, and some of them will even eat small mammals, like
baby mice. So, when you feed them the best thing to do is give them a vary diet, which matches
their diet in the wild. And that’s how to decide if a bearded dragon is the right pet for you. Next,
we’ll talk about setting up the enclosure.
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